m 


BINDING 
Vol.  Ill 

The  binding  design  on  this  volume  is  an  authorized  facsimile 
of  the  original  art  binding  on  the  official  British  copy  of  the  Ver^ 
sailles  Peace  Treaty,  which  was  signed  by  King  George  V  and 
deposited  in  the  Archives  of  the  British  Government. 


1  Iflti 


7 


* 


Vinkme  of  the  Lusitania 

^*^A  Gernmn  picture  issued  in 
\\  commemoration  of  the  disaster 

'     Painting  by  ClauS  fcergtn 


(?WP 


m 


W 


mfci 


THE  GREAT  EVENTS 


OF 


THE  GREAT  WAR 


A  COMPREHENSIVE  AND  READABLE  SOURCE  RECORD  OF  THE 
WORLD'S  GREAT  WAR.  EMPHASIZING  THE  MORE  IMPORTANT 
EVENTS.  AND  PRESENTING  THESE  AS  COMPLETE  NARRATIVES 
IN  THE  ACTUAL  WORDS   OF    THE    CHIEF    OFFICIALS    AND    MOST 

EMINENT  LEADERS 


NON-PARTISAN 


NON-SECTIONAL 


NON-SECTARIAN 


COORDINATE  WITH  "THE  GREAT  EVENTS  BY  FAMOUS  HISTORIANS" 
AND  ARRANGED  UPON  THE  STANDARD  SYSTEM  OF  THE  NATIONAL 
ALUMNI  ASSOCIATION  AS  ESTABLISHED  UNDER  THE  COUNSEL 
OF  THE  LEADING  SCHOLARS  OF  EUROPE  AND  AMERICA.  WITH 
OUTLINE  NARRATIVES.  INDICES,  CHRONOLOGIES.  AND  COURSES 
OF    READING    ON    SOCIOLOGICAL    MOVEMENTS    AND    INDIVIDUAL 

NATIONAL  ACTIVITIES 


EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 


CHARLES    F.    HORNE,    Ph.D 

I 

DIRECTING    EDITOR 

WALTER    F.    AUSTIN,    LL.M. 

With  a  staff  of  specialists 

VOLUME  III 


3s 


tlfje  jSatiottal  Slumttt 
b3 


COPYRIGHT,  I920, 

By  THE  NATIONAL  ALUMNI 


CONTENTS 

VOLUME   III — 1915 
Germany's  Year  of  Triumph 

PAGE 

An  Outline  Narrative  of 

The  Building  of  Germany's  Empire  of  Middle  Europe      xiii 

CHARLES  F.  HORNE 

I     The  "Prussian  Terror"  in  France 

Official  Slaughter  and  "the  Great  Pillage"  .         .         1 

WILLIAM  HOHENZOLLERN,  the  former  Kaiser. 
BISHOP  HENRY  CLEARY,  of  New  Zealand. 
PREFECT  L.  MIRMAN,  chief  Civil  Magistrate  of  the  invaded 
Region. 

II     Turkey  Loses  the  Caucasus  {January  4) 

The  Russian  Victory  of  Sarikamish    ...       38 

ROBERT  MACHRAY,  Military  Authority  on  the  Near  East. 

III  The  U-Boat  War  on  Commerce  (Feb.  4) 

Germany's  Defiance  of  the  Neutral  Nations  .       49 

PRINCE  VON  BULOW,  former  Imperial  Chancellor  of  Germany. 
ADMIRAL  VON  TIRPITZ,  organizer  of  the  U-boat  warfare. 
WILLIAM  ARCHER,  the  noted  British  author. 

IV  Neuve  Chapelle  (March  10) 

The  First  Great  Artillery  Assault         .  .  -65 

COUNT  CHARLES  DE  SOUZA,  the  renowned  French  military 

authority. 
FRANK  R.  CAN  A,  F.R.G.S.,  British  publicist. 
BERLIN  POPULAR  MAGAZINE  ACCOUNT. 

V     The  Naval  Disaster  of  the  Dardanelles  (March  18) 

Turkey  Proves  the  British  Fleet  is  not  Invincible      .        79 

HENRY  MORGENTHAU,  U.  S.  Ambassador  to  Turkey. 
HENRY  W.  NEVINSON,  British  military  expert. 

VI     The  Surrender  of  Przemysl  (March  22) 

Austria  Loses  her  Last  Eastern  Stronghold  .  .       93 

GENERAL  ALEX.  KROBATIN,  Austrian  Minister  of  War. 
STANLEY  WASHBURN,  official  British  observer  at  the  front. 
DIARY  OF  A  RUSSIAN  OFFICER, 
vii 


viii  CONTENTS 


v>a<;ic 


VII     The  "Battle  of  the  Passes"  (March  23- April  16) 
Russia  Reaches  the  Peak  of  her  Success  Against 

Austria         .  .  .  .  .  .106 

COUNT  CHARLES  DE  SOUZA,  the  renowned  French  military 

authority. 
OCTAVIAN  TASLAUANU.  a  Rumanian  officer  under  Austria. 
GRAND  DUKE  NICHOLAS,  the  Russian  Commander. 
MAJOR  E.  MORAHT,  the  German  military  critic. 

VIII     Germany    Protests    Against  American  Munition 
Sales  (April  4) 
She  Demands  a  Revision,  in  her  Favor,  of  Neu- 
trality Laws  .  .  .  .  -125 

BARON  STEPHEN   BURIAN,  Austria's  Minister  of  Foreign 

Affairs  in  1915. 
ROBERT  LANSING,  U.  S.  Secretary  of  State. 

IX     The  Canadians  Defy  the  First  Gas  Attack  (April  22) 

The  Second  Battle  of  Ypres        .         .         .  137 

OFFICIAL  GERMAN  PRESS  REPORT. 
'  GENERAL  SIR  JOHN  FRENCH,  the  British  Commander. 
SIR  MAX  AITKEN,  Member  of  the  Canadian  Parliament. 

X     The  Armenian  Massacres  (April-December) 

The  Last  Great  Crime  of  the  Turks     .  .  .154 

LORD  BRYCE,  former  British  Ambassador  to  the  U.  S. 
DR.  MARTIN  NIEPAGE,  German  teacher  in  Asia  Minor. 
DR.  HARRY  STURMER,  German  diplomat  in  Constantinople. 

XI     Dunajec:  the  Breaking  of  the  Russian  Front  (May 

1) 
The  Triumph  of  German  Artillery  .  .177 

GENERAL  VON  MACKENSEN,  the  German  Commander  in  the 

Field. 
GENERAL  KROBATIN,  Austrian  Minister  of  War. 
GRAND  DUKE  NICHOLAS,  The  Russian  Commander  in  the 

Field. 
STANLEY    WASHBURN,    British    Official   Observer   with   the 

Russians. 

XII     The  Sinking  of  the  Lusitania  (May  7) 

Germany  and  the  United  States  at  Open  Clash      .      187 

LORD  MERSEY,  Judge  at  the  Official  Examination. 
GOTTLIEB  VON  JAGOW,  German  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs. 
PRESIDENT  WOODROW  WILSON. 


CONTENTS 

XIII     Britain  Democratized  under  Lloyd  George  (May 

25)  . 
The  Munitions  Crisis       ..... 

JULES  DESTREE,  a  noted  French  author. 
GEORGES  CLEMENCEAU,  Prime  Minister  of  France. 


IX 


PACK 


201 


XIV     Italy  joins  the  Allies  (May  23) 

The  Italian  "People's  War"  on  Austria      . 

EMPEROR  FRANZ  JOSEF,  of  Austro-Hungary. 

VON  BETHMANN-HOLLWEG,  Chancellor  of  Germany  in  1015. 

ANTONIO  SALANDRA,  Prime  Minister  of  Italy  in  1915. 


214 


XV     The  Fall  of  Warsaw  (Aug.  4) 

Russia  Loses  her  Whole  Outer  Line  of  Defense 

GENERAL  VON  DER  BOECK,  German  infantry  general  and 

critic. 
MARGARETE  MUNSTERBERG,  condensing  German  official 

accounts. 
PRINCESS  CATHARINE  RADZIWILL,  of  Russia. 


229 


XVI     Britain's  Failure  at  the  Dardanelles  (Aug.  6-10) 
The  Anzacs  Lose  the  Main  Assault  at  Sari-hair 

LORD  KITCHENER,  British  Minister  of  War  in  1015. 
SIR  IAN  HAMILTON,  British  Commander  at  the  Dardanelles. 
ELLIS  BARTLETT,  British  eye-witness. 

LEMAN   VON    SANDERS,    German   General   commanding   in 
Turkey. 


252 


XVII     Germany's  Secret  Attack  upon  America  (Sept.  g) 
Disclosure  of  Criminal  Methods  Employed  Against 

Neutrals       .  .  .  .  .  .274 

ROBERT  LANSING,  U.  S.  Secretary  of  State. 
CONSTANTIN   DUMBA,  Austrian  Ambassador  to  the  U.   S. 
PROF.  E.  E.  SPERRY,  official  publicist  for  the  U.  S.  Government. 


XVIII     The  Big  Allied  Offensive  in  the  West  (Sept.  25- 
Oct.  6) 
The  Battles  of  Champagne  and  Loos  . 

COUNT  CHARLES  DE  SOUZA,  French  military  authority. 
COLONEL  A.  M.  MURRAY,  British  military  critic. 

FRENCH  GOVERNMENTAL  STATEMENT. 

GERMAN  GOVERNMENTAL  STATEMENT. 

A  GERMAN  OFFICER  PARTICIPATING. 


302 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


XIX     Russia's  Desperate  Rally  (Sept.-Oct.) 

The  Czar  takes  Personal  Command  of  His  Armies    ■    316 

NICHOLAS  II,  Czar  of  Russia. 

OFFICIAL  RUSSIAN  BULLETIN. 

AN     HUNGARIAN     OFFICER     IN     THE     ATTACK. 
EDWIN  GREWE.  British  authority  on  Eastern  Europe. 

XX     Bulgaria  Joins  the  Central  Powers  {Oct.  11) 

She  Seeks  the  Destruction  of  Serbia     .  .  .324 

A.  MENSHEKOFF.  RussiaD  patriotic  leader. 
PRINCESS  CATHARINE  RADZIWILL,  of  the  Russian  Court. 
WASSIL  RADOSLAVOFF,  Prime  Minister  of  Bulgaria. 
ITALIAN  PRESS  DISPATCH. 

XXI     The  Crushing  of  Serbia  (Oct.  6-Nov.  30) 

The  Heroic  Struggle  against  Hopeless  Odds  .      341 

VLADISLAV  SAVIC.  Serbian  scholar  and  soldier. 

ROBERT  MACHRAY,  Military  authority  on  the  Near  East. 

XXII     Execution  of  Edith  Cavell  (Oct.  12) 

Teutonic  Obstinacy  in  its  Ugliest  Mood       .         .     359 

MAITRE  DE  LEVAL.  Belgian  lawyer. 

BRAND  WHITLOCK.  U.  S   Minister  in  Belgium. 

HUGH  GIBSON,  Secretary  to  the  U.  S.  legation. 

REV.  H.  S.  GAHAN,  British  chaplain  in  Brussels. 

DR.  A.  ZIMMERMANN,  afterward^German  Minister  of  State. 

XXIII  The  Middle-Europe  Empire  Established  (Nov.  5) 

A  German  Railroad  from  Berlin  to  Constantinople       372 

HARRY  PRATT  JUDSON,  President  of  the  University  of  Chicago. 
R.  W.  SETON-WATSON,  Lecturer  of  London  University. 

MANIFESTO  OF  THE  GERMAN  "INTELLECTUALS." 
DR.  LUDWIG  STERN,  German  publicist. 

XXIV  The  Serbian  Exodus  (Nov.-Dec.) 

The  Awful  Winter  Flight  Across  the  Mountains     .      394 

HENRI  BARBY,  French  eye-witness. 

FORTIER  JONES,  American  eye-witness. 

DR.    NIERMEIJER,    President   of   the   Holland    Investigating 

Committee. 
ANTHONY  ANTHANASIADOS,  Serbian  eye-witness. 
KOSTA  NOVAKOVITCH.  Secretary  of  United  Labor  Unions  of 

Serbia. 

XXV     Poland's  Agony  (Nov.-Dec.)      .         .         .  .411 

FREDERICK  C.  WALCOTT.  U.  S.  Member  of  Polish  Relief 

Commission. 
M.  TROMPCZYNSKI,  Polish  Member  of  Prussia's  Legislature. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


VOLUME 

Ill 

The  Lusitania  {page  187) 

Painting  by  Claus  Bergen. 

•            • 

PAGE 

Frontispiece 

The  Winter-long  Battle  for  the  Carpathians 
Painting  by  Anton  Hoffmann. 

.      106 

The  United  Defense 

Crayon  by  Lucien  Jonas. 

•            • 

.      141 

Germany  in  the  Air 

Painting  by  M.  Zeno  Diemer. 

•            • 

•     303 

XI 


1915 
GERMANY'S  YEAR  OF  TRIUMPH 

AN  OUTLINE  NARRATIVE  OF 

THE  BUILDING  OF  GERMANY'S  GRIM  EMPIRE  OF 

MIDDLE  EUROPE 

BY    CHARLES    Fv   HORNE 

THE  year  of  191 5  was  one  of  sore  amazement  to  western 
Europe.  In  1914  Germany  had  failed;  her  plan  for 
conquering  Europe  by  one  swift  blow  had  been  met  by  a 
France  more  strong,  a  Britain  more  alert,  a  Russia  more 
loyal,  than  she  had  reckoned  on.  But  in  191 5  the  Allies' 
leaders  misread  and  misjudged  this  Germany  as  completely 
as  she  had  misjudged  them,  and  with  results  almost  equally 
disastrous.  They  seemed  to  think  that  Germany,  having 
struck  with  her  utmost  force,  had  exhausted  her  forty  years 
of  preparation  and  was  now  helpless.  They  assumed  that 
they  had  only  to  "carry  on,"  only  to  continue  the  same 
effort  as  before,  and  soon  she  would  be  entreating  mercy  at 
their  feet. 

Therein  they  underrated  both  the  German  power  and  the 
German  temper.  The  whole  German  people  now  gave  them- 
selves up  to  winning  the  War  at  any  cost.  To  the  mere  mili- 
tary colossus  of  19 14  there  succeeded  in  19 15  a  national 
colossus  far  mightier,  less  brutal,  but  more  patiently  and 
sternly  terrible.  The  German  people  as  individuals  almost 
ceased  to  exist.  Every  one  was  set  to  labor  for  the  State, 
either  in  the  army  itself  or  in  preparing  its  munitions.  Fam- 
ily life  became  a  minor  matter,  as  did  personal  business. 
The  little  manikins  no  longer  moved  or  thought  or  even 
dreamed  as  human  beings;  they  were  become  mere  cogs  in 
the  mighty  war-machine  which  was  to  establish  the  German 
supremacy  over  Europe. 

It  is  worth  noticing  that  European  victory,  and  no  longer 
world  victory,  was  the  purpose  of  this  less  blatant  Germany 

xiii 


xiv  AN  OUTLINE  NARRATIVE  OF 

of  191 5.  World  victory  was  now  quite  frankly  laid  aside 
as  too  large  an  attempt.  It  was  to  be  the  goal  of  a  later  war, 
for  which  this  one  was  to  prepare  the  foundations.  The 
valiant  army  of  France,  the  unconquerable  navy  of  Britain, 
the  ever-replenishing  hordes  of  Russia,  these  had  proven  too 
strong  to  be  destroyed  at  once.  So  Germany  concentrated 
on  making  the  most  of  what  she  had  already  partly  accom- 
plished, the  extension  of  her  power  over  a  newly  created 
empire  including  all  middle  Europe. 

The  plans  of  her  leaders  for  establishing  this  empire 
were  shrewdly  laid.  The  Germans  recognized,  more  clearly 
than  the  Allies,  the  nature  of  the  deadlock  on  the  French 
front.  What  this  deadlock  really  meant  was  not  that  Ger- 
many was  growing  feebler,  but  that  the  new  devices  for 
defensive  war  had  so  outranked  new  measures  for  attack 
that  a  lesser  army  in  the  trench  line  could  hold  back  a  stronger 
one.  Advance  must  be  a  matter  of  a  few  feet  or  rods,  won 
only  at  a  cost  impossible  to  pay,  even  in  cheapest  "cannon- 
fodder."  Hence,  inverting  her  purpose  of  the  preceding 
campaigns,  Germany  in  19 15  planned  to  remain  on  the  de- 
fensive in  the  West,  while  she  won  the  War  in  the  East. 

In  the  West  her  purpose  became  civic  rather  than  mili- 
tary. She  set  herself  to  consolidate  her  rule  over  Belgium 
and  the  captured  parts  of  northern  France  in  the  hope  that 
these  might  ultimately  become  a  part,  and  a  submissive  part, 
of  her  Mid-Europe  Empire.  Her  governors  therefore  tram- 
pled underfoot  all  civilian  protests  within  the  conquered  re- 
gion. They  governed  these  lands  in  the  same  spirit  as  they 
had  ravaged  them.  Their  motto  was  still  that  no  other  peo- 
ple could  possess  any  rights  when  these  came  in  conflict  with 
German  wishes.1  In  the  military  strife  in  the  West,  Ger- 
many planned  merely  to  hold  her  trench  line  as  cheaply  as 
she  could ;  while  France  and  Britain,  kept  in  hot  anger  by  her 
treatment  of  the  captured  provinces,  exhausted  their  strength 
against  her  defenses.  Meanwhile  in  the  East,  her  new  em- 
pire was  to  be  expanded  and  consolidated  by  her  fiercest  war- 
fare. 

1  See  §  I,  "The  Prussian  Terror  in  France,"  by  the  Kaiser,  Bishop 
Cleary,  etc. 


THE  BUILDING  OF  GERMANY'S  EMPIRE         xv 

THE  SWINGING  PENDULUM   OF  VICTORIES 

With  this  end  in  view,  Germany  began  the  year  by  en- 
couraging Turkey  to  a  vigorous  attack  on  Russia,  so  as  to 
deplete  the  Russian  strength.  Enver  Pasha,  the  vainglori- 
ous Turkish  leader,  was  persuaded  to  undertake  an  Asiatic 
campaign  against  the  Russians  in  Armenia  and  the  Caucasus. 
This  resulted  in  brilliant  Russian  victories.1  They  were 
disastrous  to  the  Turks,  but  not  at  all  so  to  Germany,  whose 
control  over  her  Ally  was  thereby  increased.  Also  Russian 
strength  was  distracted  from  the  main  front,  the  Polish 
front,  where  Germany's  own  attack  was  later  to  be  made. 

In  similar  fashion,  Russia  unwittingly  played  the  Ger- 
man game,  by  devoting  herself  to  a  gigantic  and  most  heroic 
attack  upon  the  Austrian  forces  in  the  Carpathian  moun- 
tains. Here  for  months  was  fought  the  remarkable  "Battle 
of  the  Passes."  All  through  the  bitter  eastern  winter  of 
19 14-15,  the  Russians  struggled  onward,  high  above  the 
line  of  constant  snow,  to  force  their  way  over  the  Carpa- 
thian mountain  passes  and  so  enter  Hungary  and  break  the 
last  shadow  of  Austria's  power.  Nature  fought  against  them 
even  more  than  the  fiery  Hungarians,  who  were. now  bat- 
tling not  for  conquest  but  for  their  homes.  Yet  even 
against  Nature  the  Russians  pushed  on.  They  won  the 
crest  of  the  mountain  range;  they  were  ready  for  the  plunge 
into  the  land  beneath;  and  it  was  spring  at  last,  the  fateful 
first  of  May,  1915.2 

Up  to  that  first  of  May  the  pendulum  of  the  war  seemed 
still  swinging  in  the  Allies'  favor.  Russia  had  won  three 
great  victories :  in  the  Caucasus,  in  the  Carpathians,  and  a 
third  in  the  surrender  of  Przemysl  (pra-mel),  the  one  strong 
fortress  which  had  held  out  against  her  in  Galicia.  The 
Austrian  army  in  Przemysl  surrendered  on  March  22nd, 
surrendered  to  starvation  after  six  months  of  siege,  the  only 
old-time  lengthy  siege  of  the  War.3  Everywhere,  the  strug- 
gle in  the  East  seemed  to  promise  Russian  victory;  and 
everywhere  in  the  Allied  countries  hope  ran  high. 

1See  §  II,  "Turkey  Loses  the  Caucasus,"  by  Machray. 

'  See  §  VII,  "Battle  of  the  Passes,"  by  De  Souza,  Duke  Nicholas,  etc. 

8  See  §  VI,  "Surrender  of  Przemysl,"  by  Gen.  Krobatin,  etc. 


xvi  AN  OUTLINE  NARRATIVE  OF 

This  was  in  spite  of  the  first  serious  setback  in  the  Dar- 
danelles, which  had  given  Turkey  breathing  space,  time  to 
recover  her  courage  after  the  defeat  in  the  Caucasus  and 
become  once  more  convinced  of  her  own  and  German  su- 
periority. In  March  a  combined  French  and  British  war- 
fleet  had  attempted  to  force  the  strait  of  the  Dardanelles, 
the  Turks'  guarded  passage  between  Europe  and  Asia.  Its 
conquest  would  have  captured  Constantinople,  and  crushed 
all  Turkey  at  a  blow.  Almost,  the  bold  scheme  succeeded. 
We  know  now  that  with  a  little  more  effort  it  would  have 
succeeded;  but  it  failed.  The  ships  were  driven  back;  and 
the  reanimated  Turks  gathered  an  army  and  munitions,  and 
made  enthusiastically  ready  to  resist  any  future  attack.  They 
applauded  themselves  as  being  the  only  people  who  had 
"proved  that  the  British  fleet  was  not  invincible."  1 

Meanwhile,  the  early  spring  had  also  seen  a  lack  of  Ally 
success  on  the  Western  trench  line.  France  and  Britain 
were  both  hopeful  of  beating  back  the  Germans  there.  The 
French  tried  it  in  March  in  the  Champagne  district,  west  of 
the  Argonne  forest,  but  without  success.  Next,  the  British 
at  Neuve  Chapelle  ( noov-sha-pel )  made  an  even  larger  ef- 
fort, with  even  less  result.  For  the  Neuve  Chapelle  assault 
British  munition  factories  had  been  working  all  the  winter 
making  a  store  of  projectiles,  to  be  used  in  one  huge  ar- 
tillery attack  such  as  the  world  had  never  known  before. 
This,  on  March  ioth,  was  hurled  against  the  Germans.  The 
bombardment  was  tremendous,  awesome;  it  lasted  for  three 
days  of  tumult.  Then  the  British  infantry  rushed  upon  the 
battered  trench-line  hoping  to  break  through,  capture  the 
dazed  remnant  of  the  defenders,  and  then  attack  the  other 
German  positions  from  the  rear.  But  they  had  overcounted 
the  effect  of  the  great  bombardment.  Other  German  de- 
fenses, other  troops,  were  ready  behind  the  foremost 
trenches ;  and  soon  the  British  were  brought  to  a  halt  in  costly 
failure.2 

It  was  no  part  of  Germany's  plan  to  seem  too  passive 

1  See   §   V,   "Naval   Disaster   of    the    Dardanelles,"   by   Ambassador 
Morgenthau,    etc. 

1  See  §  IV,  "Neuve  Chapelle,"  by  De  Souza,  etc. 


THE  BUILDING  OF  GERMANY'S  EMPIRE       xvii 

in  the  West.  Shortly  after  Neuve  Chapelle,  she  launched  a 
cautious  offensive  of  her  own  against  Ypres.  Here  for  the 
first  time  she  tried  that  new  and  hideous  weapon,  poison  gas. 
On  April  22nd,  she  directed  a  deadly  cloud  of  this  against 
the  point  where  the  French  and  British  trenches  met.  A 
French  regiment  facing  the  full  strength  of  the  gas  was 
practically  annihilated,  hundreds  of  men  perishing  in  awful 
torture.  The  British  portion  of  the  line  was  held  by  the 
Canadian  troops ;  and  these,  encountering  the  poison  less  di- 
rectly, were  able  to  survive  and  even  at  last  to  beat  back 
the  German  infantry  assault  that  followed  hard  upon  the 
gas.  The  whole  War  contained  nothing  more  terrible  than 
the  launching  of  this  new  form  of  agonizing  destruction, 
nor  more  splendid  than  the  heroism  with  which  it  was  met.2 
Soon  afterward  the  Germans  tried  another  similar  device, 
the  flame  thrower,  by  which  they  hurled  a  stream  of  burn- 
ing oil  against  their  foes.  The  fire  started  conflagrations 
everywhere  it  fell.  But  against  this  also  the  Allied  soldiers 
held  firm,  nor  did  the  fire  prove  practical  of  employment  in 
large  quantities.  Moreover,  hasty  inventions  were  contrived 
to  meet  the  gas  assaults.  Thus  defense  soon  reasserted  itself 
as  stronger  than  attack.  The  Western  struggle  was  again  at 
deadlock  by  the  first  of  May. 

A    MIGHTIER    WARFARE    BEGUN    AT    THE   DUNAJEC 

On  that  fateful  date  Germany  launched  her  own  real 
main  attack,  the  one  for  which  she  had  been  preparing  all 
winter.  How  the  German  High  Staff  must  have  smiled  at 
the  French  and  British  bombardments  in  Champagne  and  at 
Neuve  Chapelle!  How  they  must  have  congratulated  them- 
selves upon  their  own  superiority !  They  too  had  been  pre- 
paring a  bombardment,  and  it  was  such  a  monster  one  as 
made  that  of  Neuve  Chapelle  seem  the  effort  of  a  child.  It 
was  directed  against  the  Russian  army  on  the  Dunajec  (doo'- 
nah-jek)  River,  in  Austria's  province  of  Galicia  just  south 
of  the  Polish  border :  that  is,  about  midway  of  the  long 
Eastern  battle  line.    It  did  what  the  Britons  had  hoped  to  do 

2  See  §  IX,  "Canadians  Defy  the  First  Gas  Attack,"  official  German 
and  British  reports. 


xviii  AN  OUTLINE  NARRATIVE  OF 

with  their  bombardment ;  it  fairly  wiped  out  the  Russian 
forces  who  encountered  it.  The  German  infantry  then 
moved  forward,  seized  the  Russian  lines  at  Gorlice,  and 
brought  the  great  guns  onward  for  another  attack.  This 
Battle  of  the  Dunajec,  or  of  Gorlice,  was  the  beginning  of 
the  great  German  drive  on  Russia,  "Von  Mackensen's  bat- 
tering-ram," as  it  was  called.  The  Russians  could  find  no 
defense  against  it.     None  seemed  possible.1 

The  long  Russian  line  was  thus  broken  in  the  center. 
The  victors  to  the  southward  in  the  battle  of  the  Carpathian 
passes  had  to  turn  back  from  the  Hungarian  invasion,  lest 
their  line  of  supplies  be  broken  and  themselves  entrapped. 
That  was  why  Germany  had  been  so  willing  that  the  Rus- 
sians should  expend  their  best  blood  in  the  Carpathians ;  she 
knew  she  could  check  that  advance  the  moment  Mackensen 
was  ready.     She  had  thus  saved  Austria  a  second  time. 

All  through  May  and  June  that  dreadful  "battering-ram" 
kept  on  advancing  through  Galicia.  Russian  soldiers  by  the 
hundred  thousands  strove  to  bar  its  passage  by  the  mere 
weight  of  human  bodies.  They  perished  in  numbers  un- 
counted and  uncountable.  Przemysl  was  recaptured  by  the 
advancing  Germans  and  Austrians  on  June  3rd.  Lemberg, 
the  Galician  capital,  was  regained  June  22nd.  It  had  fallen 
to  the  Russians  in  the  great  battle  of  the  preceding  Septem- 
ber; and  for  almost  a  year  they  had  retained  over  Galicia 
a  rule  more  complete,  and  far  more  kindly,  than  that  of  the 
Germans  over  Belgium.  By  July  1st  the  great  Mackensen 
drive  seemed  slowing  up,  but  by  that  time  practically  all 
Galicia  was  once  more  in  Austro-German  hands,  a  restored 
province  of  the  rapidly  developing  Mid-Europe  Empire. 

ITALY   ENTERS   THE   WAR 

A  further  check  was  put,  at  least  to  Austria's  share  in  the 

Russian  drive,  by  what  was  perhaps  the  main  event  of  the 

year,  Italy's  entrance  into  the  War.2     This  was  formally 

announced  on  May  23rd,  and  was  followed  by  a  rapid  Italian 

advance  across  the  Italo-Austrian  frontier  in  the  Alps  and 

along  the  Isonzo  River.    The  Teutons,  however,  refused  to 

1  See   §   XI.   "Dunajec,"   by  Gen.   Mackensen,   Duke   Nicholas,   etc. 
*  See  §  XIV,  "Italy  Joins  the  Allies,"  by  Franz  Josef,  Salandra,  etc. 


THE  BUILDING  OF  GERMANY'S  EMPIRE        xix 

become  unduly  anxious  over  this  attack.  They  trusted  to 
the  strong  natural  barrier  of  mountains  to  hold  the  Italians 
in  check,  and  sent  there  only  the  weaker  Austrian  reserves, 
the  regiments  of  the  "Landstrum"  or  older  men.  For  a  year 
the  Landstrum  held  the  Italians  fairly  in  check,  while  Aus- 
tria still  used  her  main  strength  against  her  former  foes, 
Russia  and  Serbia. 

This  sudden  entry  of  Italy  into  the  struggle  was  an  event 
not  clearly  understood  at  the  time,  especially  in  neutral  lands, 
where  there  was  a  tendency  to  regard  it  as  a  mere  selfish 
grasping  after  territory,  an  attempt  to  get  in  line  with  the 
victorious  Allies  and  so  share  their  spoils.  Such  views  were 
only  possible  because  the  European  situation  was  misun- 
derstood. Distant  neutral  peoples  still  labored  under  the 
illusion  that  Germany  had  exhausted  herself  at  the  Marne; 
and  they  had  been  told  that  the  spring  battles  of  Neuve 
Chapelle  and  Ypres  had  been  great  Ally  triumphs,  proofs  of 
an  ever-increasing  superiority  of  force.  They  pictured  the 
Germans  at  home  as  exhausted,  starving  and  despairing.  Of 
the  new  national  colossus  which  had  prepared  the  munitions 
for  the  tremendous  Mackensen  drive  they  had  no  conception 
whatever.  That  drive  was  to  them  but  another  of  the  see- 
saw movements  on  the  Eastern  front;  no  one  foresaw  that 
it  was  the  beginning  of  Russia's  destruction. 

The  Allies'  leaders,  however,  were  under  no  misconcep- 
tion as  to  the  terrible  meaning  of  the  astounding  artillery 
battle  of  the  Dunajec.  In  it  they  foresaw  Verdun  and  all  the 
other  tremendous  battles  of  191 6.  Italy  knew  well  that  she 
was  entering  on  a  struggle  of  life  and  death.  German  prop- 
agandists had  done  everything  possible  to  keep  her  neutral ; 
but,  as  her  leaders  grimly  stated  their  position,  a  victorious 
Germany  would  surely  trample  Italy  under  foot  despite  every 
promise.  The  only  future  that  awaited  her  in  that  direction 
was  one  of  vassalage  such  as  had  already  been  forced  upon 
Austria.  So  she  might  better  make  her  fight  for  freedom 
now,  while  she  had  great  allies  to  help  her,  than  be  driven 
to   a   hopeless  struggle  afterward,   alone. 

In  other  words,  Italy  was  at  last  awake  to  the  full  mean- 
ing of  the  German  world-menace.     The  scales  had  fallen 


xx  AN  OUTLINE  NARRATIVE  OF 

from  her  eyes,  as  they  were  to  fall  from  those  of  America 
two  years  later;  and  the  entry  of  the  one  into  the  War  was 
of  somewhat  the  same  character  as  that  of  the  other. 

THE   AROUSAL   OF   DEMOCRACY   AGAINST   GERMANY 

Indeed  Italy's  step  was  but  a  part  of  that  general  arousal, 
that  intensifying  of  effort,  with  which  Western  Europe  met 
the  realization  of  Germany's  increasing  power.  Now  came 
the  real  nationalization  of  the  Great  War.  France  to  be 
sure  could  increase  her  effort  but  little.  From  the  first  she 
had  recognized  this  as  a  struggle  to  the  death,  and  had  sum- 
moned every  Frenchman  to  her  aid.  Britain,  however,  had 
so  far  fought  in  her  old  dogged  but  leisurely  fashion.  In 
May,  191 5,  after  the  news  of  the  Dunajec,  she  underwent 
a  revolution.1 

It  was  a  quiet,  orderly  revolution,  typically  British,  ap- 
proved of  by  all  classes.  Nevertheless  it  meant  the  com- 
pletest  change.  The  country  had  always  been  an  oligarchy, 
that  is  it  had  been  ruled  by  its  upper  classes,  now  it  became 
a  democracy.  Lloyd  George,  the  Welsh  lawyer,  leader  and 
trusted  friend  of  the  working  classes,  was  taken  into  the 
central  group  of  rulers.  Later  he  was  to  become  Prime  Min- 
ister; for  the  moment  he  was  made  Minister  of  Munitions, 
and  his  special  business  was  to  draw  all  the  civilian,  popula- 
tion into  the  making  of  war  munitions.  The  famous  war 
hero,  Lord  Kitchener,  was  already  busy  building  up  a  great 
army ;  and  when  at  last  volunteering  failed,  the  nation  turned 
sturdily  to  conscription,  a  method  of  State  control  over  the 
liberty  of  the  individual  which  Britons  had  always  held  in 
abhorrence.  They  had  declared  it  the  distinguishing  mark 
between  autocracy  and  their  own  freedom.  Now,  however, 
the  whole  nation  had  been  hardened  to  a  temper  matching 
that  of  France  and  Germany.  They  meant  to  have  an  army 
and  munitions  to  equal  these  of  the  Dunajec.  There  was  to 
be  no  more  dallying  with  the  War.  It  was  to  be  fought  with 
the  strength  of  every  Briton. 

Perchance  British  determination  would  never  have 
reached  this  height  had  it  not  been  for  the  new  and  fero- 

1  See  §  XIIT,  "Britain  Democratized,"  by  Destree  and  Clemenceau. 


THE  BUILDING  OF  GERMANY'S  EMPIRE        xxi 

cious  methods  of  warfare  adopted  by  the  Germans  both 
overhead  and  underseas.  These  were  all  part  of  Germany's 
mistaken  policy  of  "fright fulness"  which  was  at  last  to  unite 
the  world  against  her.  She  began  with  warship  raids  on 
British  seacoast  resorts  in  the  autumn  of  1914.  These  could 
have  no  direct  result  beyond  the  destroying  of  a  small  amount 
of  private  property  and  the  slaying  of  some  dozens  of  civil- 
ians, defenseless  folk  who  by  every  principle  of  International 
Law  or  common  humanity  should  have  been  spared  and 
even  protected.  The  whole  question  was  as  to  the  moral 
effect  of  such  destruction.  Were  the  Britons  really,  as  the 
German  schools  had  taught,  a  nation  of  "shopkeepers,"  who 
would  figure  these  bombardments  as  a  simple  matter  of  profit 
and  loss,  and  decide  that  war  under  such  conditions  was  a 
poor  investment  to  be  sold  out  promptly  to  escape  further 
cost? 

Of  a  similar  nature  were  the  airplane  raids  which  began 
against  both  France  and  Britain  late  in  19 14,  and  the  Zeppelin 
raids  which  began  early  in  191 5.  With  these  Germany  at 
first  anticipated  a  real  military  advantage,  such  as  the  de- 
struction of  munition  factories,  stored  munitions,  railroads, 
or  even  bodies  of  troops.  Such  a  hope,  however,  must  have 
been  soon  abandoned.  The  important  military  centers  were 
too  well  protected;  their  destruction  from  aircraft  proved 
infinitesimal.  Soon  the  German  airplanes  and  Zeppelins 
were,  quite  frankly,  bombing  Paris  and  London  and  lesser 
towns  at  random  as  an  expression  of  "frightfulness,"  doing 
as  much  promiscuous  damage  as  they  could  to  private  prop- 
erty and  to  civilian  lives. 

To  these  assaults  the  Allies,  being  less  prepared  with 
aircraft,  could  at  first  make  no  response  in  kind.  The  French, 
as  soon  as  they  possessed  the  means,  responded  with  similar 
raids  ori  Germany.  The  British,  however,  endured  the  con- 
tinued "strafing"  with  grim  scorning  for  almost  two  years 
before  they  would  even  admit  the  necessity  of  checking  it 
by  reprisals.  Not  until  the  last  year  of  the  War  did  Ger- 
many come  forward  with  a  proposal  that  such  aerial  at- 
tacks should  be  abandoned  by  both  sides.  It  was  she  who 
at  last  adopted  the  shopkeeper's  reasoning  she  had  attributed 


xxii  AN  OUTLINE  NARRATIVE  OF 

to  Britain.  The  weight  of  retributive  attacks  had  become 
so  heavy  that  Germany  decided  that  for  her  the  slaughter 
of  civilians  no  longer  paid. 

THE  SUBMARINE  ATTACK  ON   COMMERCE 

The  new  submarine  warfare  adopted  by  Germany  in 
19 1 5  was  an  even  graver  defiance  of  humanity  and  of  In- 
ternational Law.  So  far  as  the  latter  is  concerned,  it  is  of 
course  true  that  there  were  no  submarines  when  the  inter- 
national law,  as  to  capture  and  destruction  of  ships  at  sea, 
was  agreed  to  by  Germany  in  common  with  other  nations. 
It  is  therefore  conceivable  that  Germany  might  logically  and 
even  humanely  have  rejected  the  old  law  and  proclaimed  more 
satisfactory  ones  of  her  own.  But  here,  as  in  all  of  her 
defiances  of  humanity,  she  simply  rejected  all  righteousness 
and  plunged  into  elemental  ferocity.  Her  first  large  step  in 
this  direction  was  taken  in  February,  1915.1 

Up  to  that  time,  as  we  have  seen,  Germany  had  used 
her  submarines  as  other  nations  might  have  used  them,  to 
combat  warships.  In  this  legitimate  field,  in  addition  to  the 
previously  told  triumph  of  Lieutenant  Weddigen,  she  on 
February  1,  191 5,  sank  a  British  battleship,  the  Formidable; 
and  later  in  the  War  one  French  and  two  other  British  bat- 
tleships were  thus  destroyed,  though  none  of  them  were  of 
the  huge  "dreadnaught"  class.  But  these  successes  were 
too  few  and  too  costly  to  be  worth  the  effort  and  the  loss 
involved.  In  direct  warfare  the  submarine  did  not  pay. 
Moreover,  the  British  blockade,  gradually  increasing  in  se- 
verity, was  a  serious  menace  to  Germany.  So  the  German 
Government  resolved  to  use  its  U-boats  in  a  new  way,  as 
commerce  destroyers;  and  on  February  5th  she  made  an- 
nouncement of  this  to  the  world. 

Under  old  established  sea  law  a  merchant  ship  could  not 
be  destroyed  until  it  had  been  actually  boarded  and  exam- 
ined to  make  sure  it  was  an  enemy  ship  or  carrying  "con- 
traband goods,"  and  until  ample  provision  had  been  made 
for  the  safety  of  the  civilian  crew.    Such  a  course  was  obvi- 

1  See  §  III,  "The  U-boat  War  on  Commerce,"  by  von  Biilow,  von 
Tirpitz,   etc. 


THE  BUILDING  OF  GERMANY'S  EMPIRE      xxiii 

ously  impossible  to  a  tiny  and  fragile  submarine.  If  it  even 
approached  an  enemy  merchant  ship  it  might  be  captured 
or  destroyed.  In  the  later  years  of  the  War,  larger  subma- 
rines carried  heavy  guns  of  their  own;  but  the  early  U-boats 
depended  solely  on  the  deadly  torpedo,  which  must  be 
launched  from  a  distance.  Hence  the  U-boat  captain  could 
not  even  tell  which  ships  were  enemies,  since  these  would 
probably  pretend  neutrality. 

Germany  met  the  problem  by  announcing  that  she  would 
sink  all  merchant  ships  that  approached  her  enemies'  coasts. 
This  meant  obviously  the  shooting  or  drowning  of  many 
French  and  British  sailors  who  had  been  protected  by  the 
older  laws.  Such  was  indeed  the  grim  result;  and  the  sea 
slaughter  that  followed  would  in  itself  sufficiently  explain 
that  general  tensing  of  the  Allies'  purpose  which  has  been 
pointed  out  as  characteristic  of  the  spring  of  191 5. 

For  neutral  nations  the  new  German  U-boat  warfare 
meant  an  even  more  serious  situation.  It  was  the  cause 
which  was  finally  to  drag  into  the  War  not  only  the  United 
States  but  Brazil  and  China  and  several  other  neutrals,  and 
was  to  breed  against  Germany  an  abiding  hatred  among  Nor- 
wegians, Dutch,  and  those  other  small  neutrals  who,  because 
of  their  immediate  proximity  to  Germany's  fright  fulness, 
dared  not  openly  defy  her.  No  Power  had  ever  before, 
even  in  war  time,  destroyed  neutral  vessels,  or  slain  neutral 
citizens  on  the  high  seas.  Except  for  pirates  the  neutrals 
had  been  safe;  and  against  pirates  all  the  sea  Powers  had 
united.  Yet  here  was  a  leading  Power  going  back  to  piracy, 
deliberately  announcing  death  and  destruction  to  any  neu- 
tral who  dared  to  sail  the  seas  where  she  forbade. 

Germany  knew  full  well  what  she  was  doing.  She  thought 
she  could  afford  to  ignore  the  anger  of  the  outer  ring  of 
nations.  The  only  one  strong  enough  to  assail  her  was  the 
United  States;  and  German  statesmen  easily  persuaded 
themselves  that  this  country  was  too  peace-loving  to  be  driven 
into  war.  They  even  ventured  to  make  secret  war  on  Amer- 
ica, sending  agents  to  blow  up  munition  factories  and  per- 
form other  crimes  against  her  civil  law.  They  did  this  so 
openly  that  the  United  States  Government  was  compelled  to 


xxiv  AN  OUTLINE  NARRATIVE  OF 

demand  the  recall  of  the  Austrian  Ambassador  for  obvious 
violation  of  the  diplomatic  laws.1 

Germany,  through  her  submissive  Austrian  tools,  went 
even  one  step  further.  She  had  the  Austrians  protest  against 
the  sale  of  American  munitions  of  war  to  the  Allies.  The 
protest  took  the  wholly  illogical  ground  that  since  Ameri- 
cans were  not  in  a  position  to  deliver  merchandise  equally 
to  both  parties  to  the  War,  their  sales  to  the  Allies  became 
"opposed  to  the  spirit  of  International  Law."  Not  content 
with  drowning  neutral  sailors  to  stop  their  trading  with  the 
Allies,  Germany  sought  to  give  a  show  of  justice  to  her  action 
by  this  Austrian  protest.  In  itself  the  protest  would  be  un- 
important, except  for  the  fact  that  it  partly  accomplished 
what  it  was  presumably  intended  to  do.  It  confused  some 
Americans  into  thinking  there  might  be  justice  in  the  Aus- 
trian plea,  when  in  truth  there  was  none  whatever.  Ger- 
many had  herself  made  a  business  of  selling  "munitions," 
and  sometimes  even  regiments  of  soldiers,  in  every  war  that 
America  had  ever  fought,  and  not  once  had  she  been  in  a 
position  to  traffic  equally  with  each  party  to  the  war.  In 
other  words,  Germany  was  again  inventing  an  absolutely 
new  rule,  labeling  it  "International  Law,"  and  summoning 
neutrals  to  apply  it  for  her  benefit.  Her  plea,  as  a  future 
question  not  of  law  but  of  abstract  justice,  had  a  speciously 
plausible  sound.  How  unjust  its  application  would  really 
have  been  was  decisively  pointed  out  in  the  reply  made  by 
the  United  States  Government.2 

Confusion  of  American  opinion  was  further  increased 
by  the  fact  that  Britain  at  the  time  of  the  new  U-boat  attack 
began  expanding  the  established  methods  of  enforcing  mari- 
time International  Law,  so  as  to  enable  her  to  check  all  sup- 
plies from  reaching  Germany  by  sea.  The  United  States 
Government  protested  to  Britain,  but  admitted  that  the  new 
British  methods  were  within  debatable  grounds  of  law.  The 
dispute  was  thus  one  to  be  settled  within  courts  of  law. 
Moreover,  America's  dispute  with  Britain  was  wholly  dif- 
ferent from  that  with  Germany,  because  the  British  steps  in- 

1  See    §    XVII,    "The    Secret    Attack   upon    America,"    by    Lansing, 
Dumba,  etc. 

1  See  §  VIII,  "Germany  Protests  against  America,"  by  Burian,  etc. 


THE  BUILDING  OF  GERMANY'S  EMPIRE       xxv 

jured  Americans  only  in  property,  which  could  be  restored 
or  paid  for,  and  did  not  strike  at  American  lives,  which  were 
as  beyond  repayment  as  they  were  beyond  restoration. 

Nevertheless,  the  confusion  of  mind  among  Americans 
caused  by  Austria's  protest,  Germany's  arguments,  and  the 
controversy  with  Britain,  made  it  possible  for  Germany  to 
venture  her  next  step  in  frightening  neutrals  from  the  seas. 
On  May  7,  1915,  she  sank  the  Lusitania.1 

There  is  no  need  to  dwell  here  upon  the  horror  of  that 
tragedy.  Americans  know  of  it  too  well.  It  was  of  a  piece 
with  all  Germany's  policy  of  fright  fulness;  and  our  frank 
unwillingness  to  fight  made  us  to  German  judgment  a  fit- 
ting subject  for  the  lesson  of  submissive  fear  which  she 
meant  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania  to  teach  to  all  the  neu- 
trals. German  psychology  misread  Americans  as  wholly  as 
it  had  misread  the  Belgians  and  the  Britons. 

THE   GREAT   GERMAN    ATTACK   ON   RUSSIA 

By  the  summer  of  19 15  the  world  had  thus  become  almost 
a  unit  in  its  disgust  and  anger  against  the  Germans,  though 
by  no  means  a  unit  in  its  fear  of  them.  That  was  to  come 
later.  The  meaning  of  Dunajec  was  not  at  first  widely  un- 
derstood. Germany  now  proceeded  to  make  her  new  power 
clear.  In  the  west  she  launched  in  June  a  series  of  smashing 
attacks  against  the  French  in  the  Argonne.  These  were  con- 
ducted by  the  armies  of  the  Crown  Prince,  and  had  perhaps  a 
dynastic  rather  than  a  military  purpose.  At  any  rate,  they 
were  as  resolutely  met  as  they  were  delivered.  The  Germans 
could  advance  but  a  few  yards,  paying  dearly  for  each  one; 
and  after  three  weeks  they  abandoned  the  assault. 

If  it  had  been  intended  only,  to  concentrate  the  Allies' 
attention  on  the  west,  it  had  succeeded.  Germany's  mighty 
movement  against  Russia  seemed  for  the  moment  almost  for- 
gotten. This  Mackensen  advance  had  been,  as  we  have 
seen,  partly  delayed  by  Italy's  entrance  into  the  War;  but 
by  July  1  st  Galicia  was  reconquered  and  Mackensen  was 
turning  his  advance  northward  into  Poland,  threatening 
Warsaw  from  the  south. 

1  See  §  XII,  "Sinking  of  the  Lusitania,"  by  von  Jagow,  Wilson,  etc. 


xxvi  AN  OUTLINE  NARRATIVE  OF 

So  began  the  third  great  German  assault  against  War- 
saw; and  this  time  it  was  successful.  Hindenburg,  whose 
main  armies  lay  along  the  Prussian-Polish  border  to  the 
north  of  Warsaw,  suddenly  struck  southward  with  all  his 
strength,  while  Mackensen  was  striking  northward.  The 
main  Russian  armies  were  thus  caught  between  the  two, 
and  might  well  have  been  surrounded  in  Warsaw  and  cap- 
tured there.  Their  commander,  the  Grand  Duke  Nicholas, 
foreseeing  this,  fought  delaying  battles  as  long  as  he  could, 
and  then  retreated,  leaving  Warsaw  to  its  fate.  The  Ger- 
mans entered  it  on  August  4th,  triumphant  indeed  at  having 
captured  the  great  city,  but  sorely  regretful  that  they  had 
not  also  captured  within  it  the  main  Russian  army.1 

From  that  time  Russian  resistance  continued  crumbling 
before  the  mighty  blows  of  Hindenburg  and  his  able  lieu- 
tenant, Mackensen.  The  greatest  of  Russian  fortresses 
along  the  Western  frontier  was  Kovno  on  the  Niemen  (ne- 
men)  River,  the  chief  defense  against  East  Prussia.  This 
was  stormed  and  captured  by  the  Germans  on  August  17th. 
Its  loss  startled  Russia  far  more  than  that  of  Warsaw.  The 
latter  was,  after  all,  a  Polish,  not  a  Russian  city ;  but  Kovno 
was  Russian,  and  in  one  sense  was  the  outermost  defense 
of  Petrograd  itself. 

Directly  east  of  Warsaw  the  strong  Russian  fortress 
town  of  Brest-Litovsk  (le-tofsk)  was  captured  on  August 
25th ;  and  between  this  loss  of  Kovno  in  the  north  and  Brest- 
Litovsk  in  the  south,  the  Russian  armies  were  again  threat- 
ened with  encirclement.  To  escape,  they  on  September  1st 
abandoned  Grodno,  another  strong  fortress  position  between 
the  two  extremes.  Their  line  was  now  withdrawing  toward 
the  interior  of  Russia,  losing  mightily  in  men,  munitions 
and  territory,  but  always  managing  to  evade  that  final  sur- 
rounding and  capture  which  was  the  avowed  aim  of  the  Hin- 
denburg campaign. 

On  September  5th  the  Czar  announced  that  he  himself 

would  take  over  the  active  command  of  the  Russian  forces. 

This  made  no  immediate  change ;  but  gradually  the  Russian 

resistance  stiffened.  Once  more  Hindenburg  made  a  desperate 

1  See  §  XV,  "The  Fall  of  Warsaw,"  by  Van  der  Boeck,  Princess 
Radziwill.  etc. 


THE  BUILDING  OF  GERMANY'S  EMPIRE     xxvii 

effort  to  entrap  an  army,  this  time  the  one  at  the  northern 
end  of  the  long  Russian  line,  at  Vilna.  After  a  week  of 
battle  Vilna  was  captured  on  September  18th.  But  the 
Russians  again  withdrew  in  safety,  and  the  German  losses 
in  the  long  and  bitter  battle  had  been  so  heavy  that  Germany 
saw  it  was  time  to  pause.  Her  success  in  the  campaign  had 
been  enormous.  Poland  had  been  added  to  the  Mid-Europe 
Empire ;  much  of  the  Russian  frontier  lands  had  been  occu- 
pied ;  and  the  Russian  armies  had  been  sorely  battered.  To 
have  advanced  further  against  them  in  the  face  of  the  on- 
coming Russian  winter,  would  have  been  to  repeat  the  blunder 
of  Napoleon.1 

Moreover,  the  Russian  forces  seemed  once  more  as 
strong  as  ever.  Immediately  after  their  escape  from  Vilna, 
they  began  attacking  again.  At  Dvinsk,  to  the  north  of 
Vilna  and  Kovno,  there  was  a  great  battle  lasting  all  through 
mid-October.  When  the  Russians  had  no  better  weapons, 
they  fought  with  clubs  or  with  bare  hands ;  and  the  Germans 
made  no  progress  forward.  Soon  a  new  line  of  trenches  ex- 
tended all  along  the  eight  hundred  miles  of  the  Eastern 
front ;  and  the  exhausted  Germans  were  perhaps  more  glad 
of  the  chance  of  shelter  than  were  the  furious  and  uncon- 
querable Russians, 

THE  ALLIES'  EFFORTS  TO  AID  RUSSIA 

Meanwhile  what  were  the  Allies  doing  to  aid  Russia  in 
her  dark  hour  of  need?  Britain  continued  her  unfortunate 
attack  upon  the  Dardanelles.  If  she  could  break  the  Turk- 
ish resistance  there,  she  could  bring  to  Russia  some  of  the 
much  needed  ammunition.  Having  failed  to  force  a  passage 
through  the  strait  by  her  ships  alone,  she  sent  an  army  to 
their  aid.  But  by  the  time  the  army  arrived  in  May,  the 
Turks  were  fully  ready,  self-assured  and  eager  for  the  fight. 
The  Britons  could  scarcely  even  force  a  landing,  much  less 
sweep  the  Turks  from  the  entire  Dardanelles  peninsula  and 
capture  Constantinople.  The  main  assault  was  heroically 
delivered,  chiefly  by  Australian  and  New  Zealand  troops, 
on  August  ioth,  and  was  a  costly  failure.2    All  year  these 

^ee  §  XIX,  "Russia's  Desperate  Rally,"  by  the  Czar,  et  al. 
1  See  §  XVI,  "Britain's  Failure  at  the  Dardanelles,"  Kitchener. 


xxviii         AN  OUTLINE  NARRATIVE  OF 

troops  remained  on  the  narrow  strand  they  had  won  under 
the  protection  of  the  battleships,  an  unfortunate  spectacle 
to  the  nations  of  the  East,  who  were  thus  taught  by  ever- 
present  example  that  the  Britons  were  not  invincible.  At 
length,  in  December,  Britain  formally  withdrew  her  forces, 
formally  admitted  her  defeat. 

France  also  sought  to  relieve  the  pressure  upon  Russia. 
In  September,  Marshal  Joffre  ordered  the  first  great  French 
offensive  on  the  Western  front,  the  attack  in  Champagne. 
Hitherto  Joffre  had  proclaimed  his  advocacy  of  the  famous 
"nibbling"  process.  That  is,  he  meant  to  let  the  Germans 
do  all  the  costly  attacking,  while  his  sheltered  defensive 
troops  killed  as  many  foemen  as  they  could,  yielding  a  little 
ground  when  the  attack  became  too  heavy,  and  falling  back 
to  the  next  defense.  Let  Germany  work  her  savage  will  of 
plunder  and  torture  in  the  captured  region ;  that,  France 
could  not  stop.  But  in  the  end  the  "nibbling"  would  exhaust 
Germany's  strength,  and  the  British  blockade  would  reduce 
her  to  starvation  along  with  her  victims.  The  iron  patience 
of  the  nibbling  process,  however,  had  not  allowed  for  Rus- 
sia's possible  overthrow  and  the  consequent  opening  to  Ger- 
many of  all  the  foodstores  of  the  East.  So  now,  to  relieve 
Russia,  Joffre  undertook  the  Champagne  offensive.1 

Midway  between  the  sorely  battered  city  of  Rheims 
(ranee)  and  that  Argonne  forest  where  the  Germans  had 
just  attacked  in  vain  and  where  Americans  were  later  to 
win  undying  glory,  the  French  let  loose  a  three  days'  bom- 
bardment, the  heaviest  yet  known  in  the  West.  Then  half 
a  million  Frenchmen  charged  forward  on  a  narrow  front 
around  Perthes,  the  scene  of  their  unsuccessful  spring  attack. 
For  ten  days  they  battled  onward,  but  succeeded  in  ad- 
vancing their  line  only  some  two  miles.  Of  course  German 
reinforcements  were  drawn  to  the  spot  by  thousands,  and 
to  that  extent  the  German  advance  against  Russia  may  have 
been  weakened  by  the  Champagne  assault.  But  it  was  de- 
livered at  terrible  expense,  both  in  men  and  munitions ;  and 
the  French  official  expressions  of  satisfaction  over  the  re- 
sult were  by  no  means  convincing  to  outsiders.  In  brief, 
1  See  §  XVIII,  "The  Big  Allied  Offensive,"  official  statements. 


THE  BUILDING  OF  GERMANY'S  EMPIRE      xxix 

the  military  lesson  of  19 15  on  both  the  Eastern  and  the 
Western  front  was  that  while  the  new  enormous  artillery 
assault  could  break  a  second-rate  trench  defense,  yet  when 
both  offensive  and  defensive  were  of  the  highest  grade,  the 
defense  was  still  immeasurably  the  stronger. 

GERMANY  SEIZES  THE  ROAD  TO  CONSTANTINOPLE 

With  the  dying  down  of  the  French  attack  in  the  West 
and  of  the  great  German  advance  in  the  East,  there  came  in 
October  the  most  tragic  event  of  the  tragic  year,  the  crushing 
of  heroic  little  Serbia.1  Germany  had  planned  this  as  her 
most  important  coup,  the  step  which  was  to  establish  as  a 
definite  reality  her  Empire  of  Middle  Europe.  Her  two 
Allies,  Turkey  and  Austria,  were  wholly  in  her  hands.  Ger- 
man generals  commanded  their  armies;  and  in  Turkey's 
case  German  officers  controlled  her  navy  also.  But  between 
the  German-Austrian  territorial  block  and  its  Turkish  out- 
post intervened  the  middle  Balkans,  where  Bulgaria  was  neu- 
tral, and  Serbia  a  foe.  German  diplomacy  convinced  Bul- 
garia that  the  War  was  practically  won  for  Germany,  and  so 
persuaded  the  Bulgarian  king  to  do  what  the  Germans  had 
accused  Italy  of  doing.  He  entered  the  War  hastily  on  what 
he  deemed  the  winning  side,  so  as  to  share  in  the  spoils. 
Germany  was  glad  to  promise  the  Bulgarians  anything  and 
everything.  They  were  to  be  lords  of  all  the  Balkans.  Of 
course  this  lordship  could  only  be  preserved  under  Germany's 
control  and  protection;  but  for  the  moment  Germany  was 
careful  not  to  emphasize  this  feature  of  the  bargain.2 

The  arrangements  for  Bulgaria's  entry  into  the  War 
were  conducted  so  secretly  that  the  Allies  were  caught  un- 
awares. Moreover,  the  redoubtable  General  Mackensen  was 
secretly  shifted  from  the  Russian  front  and  with  some  of 
the  best  German  troops  was  sent  across  Austria  to  the  Ser- 
bian border.  Now,  suddenly,  he  began  a  fourth  Teuton  in- 
vasion of  Serbia;  and  just  at  the  most  disastrous  moment 
for  the  sturdily  resisting  Serbs,  Bulgaria  declared  war  upon 
them  and  attacked  them  from  the  rear. 

1  See  §  XXI,  "The  Crushing  of  Serbia,"  by  Savic,  etc. 
'See  §  XX,  "Bulgaria  joins  the  Central  Powers,"  by  Menshekoff, 
Radoslavoff,  etc. 


xxx  AN  OUTLINE  NARRATIVE  OF 

There  was  some  effort  to  give  Allied  help  to  the  Serbians 
by  an  army  gathered  at  Salonika,  the  nearest  port  in  neutral 
Greece.  But  this  aid  was  both  too  feeble  and  too  late.  The 
Serbs  fought  desperately  all  through  October  and  Novem- 
ber. They  yielded  no  inch  of  soil  until  it  was  deep  dyed 
with  blood.  They  fought  the  German-Austrian  army  on 
their  Danube  frontier  for  a  week  before  they  withdrew  from 
Belgrade.  Their  secondary  capital,  Nish,  fell  to  the  Bul- 
garians on  November  5th.  The  Serbian  Government  was 
withdrawn  from  town  to  town  southward  and  westward, 
until  on  November  25th  its  members  abandoned  Prisrend, 
the  last  little  border  city  that  remained  to  them,  and  fled 
across  the  Albanian  mountains  to  the  Adriatic  coast.  Here, 
under  shelter  of  the  Italian  warships,  they  established  them- 
selves at  Scutari  (skoo-tah-re),  an  exile  government  in  a 
foreign  land. 

But  they  had  still  subjects.  Undying  in  its  fame  for- 
ever, will  be  that  last  retreat  of  the  Serbian  army.  Hope- 
lessly outnumbered,  surrounded,  except  for  the  snow-cov- 
ered Albanian  mountains  at  their  backs,  without  ammunition 
and  even  without  food,  the  Serbian  soldiers  still  refused  sur- 
render. They  preferred  the  starvation  march  across  those 
frozen  winter  mountains.  Many  of  the  Serbian  women  and 
children  chose  that  alternative  also,  rather  than  face  the 
torture  they  knew  they  must  expect  from  their  unhuman 
conquerors.  It  was  the  exodus  of  a  nation.1  Few  of  the 
women  and  children  survived;  but  of  the  men,  with  Italian 
aid,  there  ultimately  gathered  over  a  hundred  thousand  in 
the  Adriatic  Island  of  Corfu,  the  nucleus  of  a  new  Serbian 
army  which  ultimately  marched  in  victorious  triumph  back 
into  its  empty  and  hideously  martyred  land. 

THE    SHRIEKING   YEAR   OF    MASSACRE 

General  Mackensen  and  his  German  troops  promptly 
withdrew  from  conquered  Serbia  and  left  it  in  Austrian  and 
Bulgarian  hands.  Of  the  butcheries,  the  deliberate  torturings 
which  followed  there,  we  can  only  speak  in  despairing  horror. 
American  Indians  never  maltreated  their  victims  with  more 

1  See  §  XXIV,  "The  Serbian  Exodus,"  by  Barby,  Novakovitch,  etc 


THE  BUILDING  OF  GERMANY'S  EMPIRE      xxxi 

fiendish  cruelty  and  delight.  In  fact  the  series  of  wide- 
spread massacres  with  which  the  Mid-Europe  Empire  was 
inaugurated  in  19 15  make  that  perhaps  the  record  year  for 
all  eternity  of  man's  inhumanity  to  his  fellows. 

Here  is  the  record.  In  the  West,  Germany  continued 
to  hold  her  dominion  over  Belgium  and  Northern  France 
by  her  established  policy  of  "fright fulness."  Of  this  the 
most  notorious,  though  by  no  means  the  most  barbaric, 
case  was  the  sudden,  secret  process  of  law  and  falsehood 
by  which  her  officials  executed  the  British  nurse,  Edith 
Cavell,  on  October  12th.1  On  the  Western  oceans,  as  we 
have  seen,  Germany  began  the  murder  of  civilians  and 
neutrals  by  means  of  submarines,  including  the  sinking  of 
the  Lusitania.  From  the  Western  skies  Zeppelins  and  other 
aircraft  dropped  their  bombs.  In  the  East  Germany  over- 
ran Poland,  professed  a  heartfelt  friendship  and  pity  for 
the  suffering  Poles,  and  then  exploited  them  in  a  slavery 
and  starvation  ten  times  worse  than  that  which  desolated 
Belgium.  The  Belgians  were  saved  by  American  charity 
and  by  the  publicity  Americans  gave  to  each  injustice.  The 
Poles,  shut  off  from  Western  knowledge  and  Western  pity, 
were  compelled  to  endure  their  Calvary  unaided.2 

These  were  German  and  official  brutalities,  deliberately 
carried  out  for  the  consolidation  of  the  expanding  German 
Empire.  In  the  farther  East,  where  Germany  had  linked 
forces  with  the  uncivilized  hordes  of  Asiatic  origin,  with 
Turks  and  Bulgars  and  Hungarians,  the  massacres  were 
more  personal,  undertaken  as  much  for  pleasure  as  for  busi- 
ness. Of  such  nature  were  the  Serbian  atrocities,  and  the 
still  more  unspeakable  massacres  of  Armenians  by  the  Turks. 
For  these  outbreaks  of  her  Eastern  partners  Germany  is  only 
indirectly  responsible ;  she  did  not  command  them  but  only 
allowed  and  unofficially  encouraged  them  by  precept  and 
example.  Meanwhile  Germany  herself  raised  constant  out- 
cry, because  on  the  Western  front  the  French  and  British 
employed  some  of  their  African  and  Hindu  troops.     These 

1  See  §  XXII,  "Execution  of  Edith  Cavell,"  by  Whitlock,  Zimmer- 
etc. 

2  See    §   XXV,   "Poland's   Agony,"  by  Walcott   and   Trompczynski. 


xxxii      THE  BUILDING  OF  GERMANY'S  EMPIRE 

troops  were  trained  to  civilized  warfare  and  kept  under 
civilized  command.  Yet  at  the  very  moment  of  her  protest, 
Germany  linked  hands  with  the  most  unhuman  of  Asiatics, 
and  permitted  these  monsters  to  work  their  ghoulish  wills 
unrestrained.  The  details  of  the  Turkish  slaughter  of  the 
Armenians  are  the  most  foul,  the  most  unprintable,  that  his- 
tory has  been  called  on  to  record  since  the  first  Hunnish  in- 
vasion of  Europe  almost  fifteen  hundred  years  ago.1 

To  Germany,  however,  these  endless  sickening  horrors 
were  but  minor  incidents,  unfortunate,  but  inseparable  from 
the  one  great  triumph,  the  establishment  of  her  Empire  of 
Middle  Europe.2  This  had  become  a  visible  fact,  symbolized 
by  the  sending  of  a  German  train  under  German  officials 
all  the  way  from  Berlin  to  Constantinople.  This  was  first 
accomplished  in  November,  and  soon  became  a  regular  sys- 
tem, affording  unbounded  satisfaction  to  every  German. 

The  new  extension  of  empire  had  become  possible 
through  three  main  steps,  each  destructive  to  Germany's  al- 
lies. Indeed,  like  the  fabled  god  of  old,  Germany  seemed 
able  to  grow  only  by  devouring  her  own  children;  for  even 
in  Poland,  which  she  now  held  as  a  conquered  province,  she 
had  begun  by  proclaiming  Polish  independence  and  then  de- 
stroying it.  The  three  steps  of  her  advance  to  Constanti- 
nople had  been :  first,  the  breakdown  of  Austria,  compelling 
her  obedience  to  German  commanders ;  second,  the  Armenian 
massacres,  which  threw  the  Turkish  leaders  into  the  arms 
of  German  diplomats  as  their  only  shelter  from  punishment 
by  outraged  Christianity;  and  third,  the  German  assistance 
and  protection  which  had  enabled  Bulgaria  to  destroy  the 
Serbs,  and  had  thereby  bound  her  in  iron  chains  to  Germany, 
her  one  defense  against  the  sternly  indignant  ''brotherhood 
of  Democracy."  This  brotherhood  was  being  born,  with 
many  throes,  through  all  the  western  world.  It  was  founded 
everywhere  on  the  increasing  rule  of  the  people.  Only  by 
thus  appealing  to  Democracy  could  the  former  rulers  find  the 
strength  to  persist  in  the  tremendous  War. 

1  See  §  X,  "The  Armenian  Massacres,"  by  Lord  Bryce.  Dr.  Sturmer. 
etc 

2  See    §   XXIII,   "Middle   Europe    Empire    Established,"   by   Presi- 
dent  Judson,   et  al. 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

THE  CAPTURED  PROVINCES  FACE  OFFICIAL  SLAUGHTER 
AND  "THE  GREAT  PILLAGE" 

WILLIAM  HOHENZOLLERN  BISHOP  HENRY  CLEARY 

PREFECT  L.  MIRMAN 

As  M.  Mirman  well  points  out  in  his  narrative  herewith,  we  re- 
tell these  stories  of  German  robbery  and  slaughter  in  no  desire  for  re- 
venge ;  but  only  because  it  is  the  somber  duty  of  History  to  make  sure 
that  they  are  not  forgotten,  that  men  shall  not  build  the  future  on  any 
mistaken  idea  of  the  character  and  the  possibilities  of  that  mass  of 
people  who  once  sought  to  force  their  mastership  upon  the  surround- 
ing nations — and  who  may  some  day  seek  to  do  the  same  again.  We 
must  all  be  eager  for  a  renaissance  of  the  German  conscience,  a  re- 
construction of  the  German  mode  of  life  and  thought.  But  it  would 
be  madness  to  let  this  hope  for  the  future  of  the  Teuton  lead  us  to 
ignore  his   demon-worship  of   the  past. 

Remember  that  each  statement  made  in  the  following  narrative  has 
been  tested  and  retested,  and  has  stood  long  before  the  public  gaze 
to  invite  contradiction  or  disproof,  if  such,  alas,  were  possible.  Dr. 
Cleary,  the  Roman  Catholic  Bishop  of  New  Zealand,  a  clergyman 
of  the  noblest  repute,  speaks  wholly  from  his  personal  experience. 
M.  Mirman,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  official  speaker  for  the  entire 
body  of  French  civic  authority  in  the  invaded  districts.  His  report 
becomes  thus  the  sworn  and  solemn  statement  of  united  France.  There 
have  been  individual  German  reports  by  men  who  declared  that  they, 
being  at  the  front,  saw  nothing  of  these  savageries.  If  the  reporters 
were  truthful  men,  they  were  very  fortunate  ones ;  for  there  have 
also  been  shoals  of  individual  reports  by  Germans  who  took  active 
part  in  the  atrocities  and  who  gloried  in  them.  Moreover,  they  found 
in  their  German  homes  a  ready  audience  to  applaud  and  encourage 
them.  The  little  local  newspapers  of  Germany  in  1914  and  1915  are 
not  pleasant  reading  to  one  who  hopes  for  the  spiritual  future  of  the 
human  race. 

Among  so  many  German  voices  speaking,  we  have  chosen  here 
the  most  authoritative  one.  We  let  the  German  Kaiser  himself  de- 
clare the  proclaimed  policy  of  the  "super-race."  One  would  like  to 
doubt  the  authenticity  of  this  damning  statement  of  one  who,  from 
his  own  human  imperfection,  assumes  to  become  at  once  judge,  jury, 
and  executioner  over  an  entire  race — a  race  who  have  overwhelmingly 
disproved  the  verdict  of  degeneracy  which  is  here  made  the  reason 
for  destroying  them.  Unfortunately  we  have  as  yet  no  evidence  against 
the  genuineness  of  this  terrible  self-indictment.  It  was  officially  pub- 
lished in  France  in  January,  iqiq,  as  part  of  an  intercepted  letter  sent 
by  the  Kaiser  early  in  the  War  to  his  fellow-plotter,  the  aged  Emperor 
of  Austria.  C.  F.  h. 

W.,  VOL.  III.— 1.  I 


2       THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

BY   KAISER  WILLIAM   II. 

MY  soul  is  torn  asunder,  but  everything  must  be  put  to 
fire  and  blood.  The  throats  of  men  and  women,  chil- 
dren and  the  aged  must  be  cut  and  not  a  tree  nor  a  house 
left  standing. 

With  such  methods  of  terror,  which  alone  can  strike  so 
degenerate  a  people  as  the  French,  the  war  will  finish  be- 
fore two  months,  while  if  I  use  humanitarian  methods  it 
may  be  prolonged  for  years.  Despite  all  my  repugnance  I 
have  had  to  choose  the  first  system. 

BY  RT.  REV.  DR.  CLEARY 

Both  in  Northern  France  and  Belgium  one  hears  very 
numerous  stories  of  oppression  and  outrage  against  the 
civilian  population.  Some  of  these,  told  at  second,  third,  or 
tenth  hand,  I  felt  bound  to  regard  as  exaggerated  or  wholly 
untrue.  Others  were  stated  in  a  form  which  did  not  aid 
investigation.  Others,  relating  to  fully  detailed  cases  of 
alleged  crimes,  some  of  them  of  peculiar  atrocity,  I  had  not 
the  time,  nor  as  to  certain  of  them  the  inclination,  to  inves- 
tigate. I  here  refer  only  to  acts  of  oppression  and  vio- 
lence, vouched  for  by  eye-witnesses  of  good  standing,  of  de- 
clared competency  and  good  character.  The  more  public 
and  striking  outrages  described  hereunder  are,  moreover, 
supported  by  a  very  considerable  mass  of  independent  and 
convergent  testimony  which  cannot  be  lightly  set  aside,  and 
which  induces  a  strong  conviction  that,  on  the  whole,  the 
German  army  of  occupation  did,  in  point  of  fact,  translate 
into  action  the  policy  of  "ruthlessness"  and  "terrorization" 
against  the  non-combatant  population  of  the  part  of  France 
to  which  reference  is  here  made. 

Hostages 

During  my  stay  in  France,  I  met  a  number  of  prominent 
and  respected  civilians — mayors,  parish  priests,  merchants, 
etc. — who  had  been  seized  by  the  German  troops  as  hos- 
tages or  sureties  for  the  "good  behavior"  of  the  local  popu- 
lation towards  the  invaders.    The  "good  behavior"  usually 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE       3 

included  the  safety  of  the  German  communications;  the 
prompt  supply  of  transport,  money,  or  other  things  requisi- 
tioned; and  the  avoidance  of  any  of  the  many  (and  often 
vague)  things  which  the  German  commander,  in  his  abso- 
lute discretion,  might  regard  as  helping  the  French  enemy 
or  interfering  with  the  invaders'  military  plans.  Failure, 
or  alleged  failure,  on  the  part  of  the  inhabitants  exposed 
the  hostages  to  heavy  fines,  deportation,  long  imprisonment, 
or  prompt  death  at  the  hands  of  a  firing  party.  Now,  hos- 
tages have,  in  such  circumstances,  no  effective  power  of 
control  over  a  scattered  and  distracted  population,  and  they 
are  in  no  way  responsible  for  the  military  action  of  their 
country's  forces.  For  these  reasons,  the  taking  and,  on  oc- 
casion, execution  or  other  penalizing  of  hostages  is  abhor- 
rent to  Christian  sentiment  and  the  modern  practice  of  civ- 
ilized war.  Part  2,  Chapter  I,  of  the  "German  War  Book" 
deals  with  this  question  of  hostages,  and  it  admits  what  fol- 
lows :  "Every  writer  outside  Germany  has  stigmatized  this 
measure  as  contrary  to  the  law  of  nations,  and  as  unjustified 
towards  the  inhabitants  of  the  country."  The  same  official 
publication  goes  on  to  say  that  this  practice  of  taking  hos- 
tages "was  also  recognized  on  the  German  side  as  harsh  and 
cruel,"  but  that  its  supreme  justification  was  "the  fact  that 
it  proved  completely  successful."  In  the  war  of  1870,  the 
Germans,  says  the  "War  Book,"  forced  their  French  hos- 
tages "to  accompany  trains  and  locomotives."    In  the  town 

of (where  I  was  billeted  for  a  week  in  the  mayor's 

house)  the  Germans,  when  in  retreat  before  the  advancing 
French  troops,  found  yet  another  use  for  hostages.  A  large 
number  of  the  townsfolk,  variously  estimated  for  me  by 
many  eye-witnesses,  were  "rounded  up"  as  hostages  by  the 
retreating  invaders.  Those  unhappy  civilians  were  placed  in 
two  guarded  lines  along  two  adjoining  bridges  and  their 
approaches,  at  the  very  edge  of  the  town.  One  of  these 
bridges  was  over  a  canal,  the  other  over  a  river  beside  the 
canal ;  and  over  these  two  bridges  the  German  troops  pro- 
ceeded to  retreat  between  the  two  long  rows  of  French  hos- 
tages: the  idea  was  that  the  oncoming  French  would,  in 
order  to  save  their  own  people,  forego  the  military  advan- 


4   THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

tage  of  blowing  up  the  bridges  with  high  explosive  shells 
or  of  treating  the  flying  enemy  to  doses  of  bursting  shrapnel 
or  machine  gun  fire.  The  French  shrapnel  did,  however, 
spatter  over  the  bridges,  smiting  friend  as  well  as  foe.  All 
my  local  informants  assured  me  that,  as  each  hapless  hos- 
tage dropped,  slain  or  wounded,  he  was  thrown  by  his  cap- 
tors into  the  water,  from  which  the  bodies  of  twenty-two  of 
them  were  subsequently  recovered. 

Although  permitted  and  authorized  by  the  German 
"War  Book,"  the  exposure  of  civilians  to  the  fire  of  their 
own  troops  is,  of  course,  contrary  to  the  usages  of  civilized 
war.  It  is  expressly  forbidden  by  Chapter  XIV.  of  the 
British  "Manual  of  Military  Law." 

Pillage 

In  every  war  there  occurs,  in  some  or  other  degree,  the 
looting  of  private  property.  (By  looting  is  meant  private 
thefts  committed  by  individuals.)  I  am  able  to  bear  per- 
sonal testimony  to  the  generally  splendid  conduct  of  our 
New  Zealand  troops  in  this  respect;  and  I  have  reason  to 
believe  that  the  restraint  practiced  by  them,  in  this  matter, 
represents  the  general  attitude  of  the  whole  army.  In  the 
old  wars,  for  instance,  fowls,  even  in  friendly  countries, 
were  commonly  looked  upon  by  soldiers  as  "derelict  goods," 
the  lawful  prize  of  the  first  comer.  And  so  they  were  re- 
garded by  both  German  officers  and  men.  But  since  the  en- 
forced retirement  of  the  invaders,  domestic  fowls  have 
again  gradually  multiplied  in  Northern  France ;  and  it  is  a 
high  tribute  to  our  men  to  state  that  these  important  "live 
stock"  of  the  French  people,  in  the  regions  traversed  by  me, 
are  practically  as  safe  from  confiscation  as  they  would  be 
in  New  Zealand  or  the  British  Isles.  The  fowl-runs  in  the 
war  area  represent  a  testimonial  to  the  good  conduct  of  our 
men,  just  as  surely  as  another  excellent  testimonial  is  fur- 
nished by  the  great  and  highly  reciprocated  kindness  and 
affection  which  they  manifest  to  the  children.  This  some- 
times shows  itself  in  quaint  and  "spoiling"  ways  (as  some  of 
them  would  to  their  own  little  ones),  but  always  with  the 
best  intentions. 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE       5 

In  modern  military  law,  the  seizure  of  the  private  prop- 
erty of  non-belligerents  is  not  permissible,  except  under  the 
pressure  of  immediate  military  necessity ;  and  where  it  is  so 
taken,  it  is  to  be  paid  for  on  the  spot,  or  its  receipt  acknowl- 
edged by  a  proper  document.  Over  all  the  regions  of  France 
and  Belgium  traversed  by  me,  and  formerly  occupied  by 
German  troops,  the  plunder  of  the  private  property  of 
civilians  was  carried  out  in  a  generally  wholesale  way,  with- 
out any  pretense  of  military  necessity,  without  payment, 
and  usually  without  receipt,  under  the  orders  and  direct  su- 
pervision of  army  officers,  and  as  an  act  of  settled  State  pol- 
icy. The  evidence  of  this  public  policy  of  plunder  was 
simply  overwhelming;  it  extended  over  the  whole  occupied 
area  visited  by  me;  and  it  spared  no  class  or  section  of  the 
people — involving  rich  and  poor  alike  to  the  extent  of  their 
respective  chattel  resources.  Collating  the  oral  and  ocular 
evidence  furnished  to  me  by,  literally,  hundreds  of  towns- 
people, villagers,  and  peasantry,  I  found  that  the  general 
official  procedure  was  as  follows : 

At  an  early  suitable  moment  after  the  occupation  of  a 
country  district  or  center  of  population,  official  arrange- 
ments were  made  for  the  seizure  and  exportation  of  the 
greater  part  of  the  chattel  property  of  the  inhabitants.  For 
this  purpose,  a  sufficient  supply  of  motor  lorries  was  as- 
sembled. Squads  of  soldiers,  under  the  supervision  of 
officers,  proceeded  with  the  work  of  plunder.  Others  raided 
the  fields  and  farms,  collected  and  drove  off  all  horses,  cattle, 
sheep,  pigs,  etc.,  and  took  possession  of  all  fowls  and  Belgian 
hares  (which  were  numerously  raised  in  Northern  France 
for  food  purposes).  Returns  were  demanded  of  all  stock, 
stores  of  grain  and  other  foodstuffs — the  failure  of  a  boy 
to  mention  a  quantity  of  wheat  concealed  in  a  cellar  resulted 
in  his  being  shot  by  a  firing-party  close  to  my  last  billet  in 
France.  Grain  and  forage  were  seized  and  sent  away;  so, 
too,  was  a  great  part  (sometimes  nearly  all)  the  food  in 
dwellings;  and  much  of  the  sustenance  of  even  poor  people 
was  roughly  thrown  about,  damaged,  wasted,  or  destroyed. 
This  was  in  1914-15.  Bed-coverings  were  almost  invariably 
taken;  so,  usually,  were  linen  and  woolen  articles  (under- 


6   THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

clothing  of  every  sort  included),  napkins,  towels,  curtains, 
table-covers,  etc.,  ornaments,  and  furniture,  excepting  (as 
a  rule)  bedsteads  and  other  heavy  and  cumbrous  pieces. 
Locked  drawers,  presses,  etc.,  were  broken  open.  Money, 
plate,  costly  ornaments  of  comfortably  portable  size,  and 
jewelry  seem  (according  to  the  information  given  to  me  by 
numerous  victims  of  this  modern  Great  Pillage)  to  have 
been  specially  favored  by  the  officers.  And  when  the  work 
was  done  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  Command,  the  long  pro- 
cession of  high-loaded  motor  lorries  set  out  on  its  way 
towards  the  Rhine. 

I  will  give  here  just  three  partial  instances  of  the  truly 
Prussian  thoroughness  with  which  this  policy  of  plunder 
was  carried  out,  in  violation  of  natural  right  and  the  law 
of  nations.  One  woman  villager,  a  worker's  wife,  showed 
me  her  gutted  (but  somewhat  reorganized)  home,  and 
wound  up  her  detailed  description  of  the  official  pillage  with 
these  words :  "Those  Prussians  did  not  even  leave  me  my 
baby's  little  booties  or  socks  or  shirts — they  took  every- 
thing, everything,  everything."  Only  a  few  doors  away 
from  her  humble  abode  stood  the  big  house  of  a  manufac- 
turer with  whom  I  was  billeted  for  some  days.  He  had  sent 
away  his  wife  and  children  shortly  before  the  invaders  oc- 
cupied the  village.  These  made  a  pretty  clean  sweep  of  his 
house.  Several  Prussian  officers  were  billeted  there.  They 
personally  stole  every  article  of  jewelry  in  the  place,  and  all 
the  valuable  gold  and  silver  family  plate,  some  of  it  con- 
sisting of  old  and  treasured  heirlooms ;  they  seized  a  number 
of  costly  gold  and  other  ornaments;  they  invaded  every 
drawer,  and  even  carried  away  his  wife's  silk  dresses.  All 
his  oil-paintings  were  taken  away,  except  a  few,  of  lesser 
value,  and  some  of  these  were  slashed  with  sword-cuts.  "lis 
ont  tout  pille  [they  have  pillaged  everything],"  said  my  host 
to  me  in  his  account  of  the  behavior  of  his  guests  from  be- 
yond the  Rhine.  Just  one  other  instance  out  of  a  great 
number  that  might  be  cited :  It  occurred  at  a  little  farm- 
house, the  home  of  a  poor,  childless,  and  very  old  widow, 
just  behind  our  fighting  lines.  I  was  billeted  in  that  shell- 
cracked    farmhouse,    within    German    gun-fire   range,    for 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE       7 

thirty-two  days,  while  serving  as  chaplain  in  the  fighting 
lines.  The  local  evidence  went  to  show  that  the  poor  old 
woman's  home  and  little  farm,  like  many  others  in  the  neigh- 
borhood, was  pretty  thoroughly  "cleaned  up"  by  the  plunder- 
parties.  Her  own  story,  and  that  of  another  old  eye-wit- 
ness living  in  the  house,  was  to  this  effect :  That  the  mili- 
tary officials  took  practically  everything,  down  to  the  last 
fowl;  that  they  compelled  the  old  woman  to  cook  her  own 
stolen  food  for  them;  that  they  fed  inordinately  thereon, 
drank  great  quantities  of  her  coffee,  and,  said  she,  "what 
they  did  not  devour,  they  wasted,"  leaving  hardly  a  scrap  of 
eatable  food  in  the  place.  "Payment?"  she  replied,  in  an- 
swer to  a  question;  "not  a  sou!"  And  receipt  for  goods 
taken  ?  "There  was  no  receipt,"  said  she.  The  same  replies 
were,  in  substance,  made  to  me  in  all  of  the  hundreds  of 
cases  of  officer-led  plunder  of  which  I  have  a  recollection. 
And,  according  to  international  law  and  to  established  con- 
ventions (to  which  Germany  was  a  party),  such  a  course  of 
conduct  in  war  is  illegal :  it  is  thieving,  naked  and  unadorned. 

Levies 

Article  52  of  the  Hague  Regulations  declares,  in  regard 
to  requisitions: — "They  must  be  in  proportion  to  the  re- 
sources of  the  country."  This  provision  is,  as  to  its  pur- 
port and  effect,  embodied  in  section  416  of  the  British  "Man- 
ual of  Military  Law,"  and  the  British  Requisitioning  In- 
structions. The  same  just  and  humane  Hague  Regula- 
tion was  affirmed  by  Article  40  of  the  Declaration  of  Brus- 
sels, accepted  by  Germany.  But  it  is  also  set  aside  in  Chap- 
ter IV  of  the  "German  War  Book,"  where  it  declares  that 
"it  will  scarcely  ever  be  observed  in  practice,"  and  that 
"in  cases  of  necessity  the  needs  of  the  army  will  alone  de- 
cide." Over  a  great  part  of  the  country  visited  by  me,  the 
civilian  population  not  alone  had  their  chattel  property  sys- 
tematically plundered,  but  they  were,  in  addition  to  this, 
subjected  to  racking  (sometimes  confiscatory)  money  fines 
and  levies.  Some  small  hamlets,  robbed  of  practically  every- 
thing, and  living  in  part  on  borrowed  money,  had  to  pro- 
vide, on  short  notice,  forced  contributions  running  into  £160 


8   THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

and  upwards.  From  the  information  supplied  to  me  by  my 
manufacturing  host  and  others,  some  of  these  compulsory 
payments,  in  the  circumstances  of  the  contributors, 
amounted  in  practical  effect  to  the  "buccaneering  levies" 
(brandscJiatz'itngcn)  which  are  declared  to  be  illegal  in 
Chapter  IV  of  the  "German  War  Book."  Yet  this  cruel  and 
unjust  measure  is  in  full  accord  with  the  spirit  of  the  mili- 
tarist writers  whose  pagan  principles  are  crystallized  in 
the  "War  Book."  One  of  these  is  Clausewitz,  an  authority 
of  high  standing  with  Prussian  militarists.  In  the  fifth  chap- 
ter of  his  "Vom  Kriege,"  he  declares  that  the  military  right 
of  requisitioning  private  property  "has  no  limits  except  those 
of  the  exhaustion,  impoverishment,  and  devastation  of  the 
whole  country."  And,  despite  its  condemnation  of  "buc- 
caneering levies"  and  some  commendable  references  to  the 
rights  of  private  property,  the  "German  War  Book"  itself 
reaches  the  same  merciless  conclusion.  This  is  stated  in  the 
third  paragraph  of  the  Introduction  and  in  a  fierce  foot- 
note quotation  thereto  from  Moltke,  which  is  given  with  ap- 
proval. Both  in  text  and  footnote  we  find,  nut-shelled,  the 
Prussian  policy  of  "terrorismus"  against  both  the  persons 
and  the  property  of  non-combatant  populations. 

Murder  of  Civilians 

Another  and  more  terrible  form  of  this  established  Prus- 
sian militarist  policy  of  "terrorization"  of  peaceful  popula- 
tions is  the  frequent  and  unnecessary  taking  of  civilian  lives. 
From  numerous  eye-witnesses — of  the  classes' already  de- 
scribed— I  heard  details  of  the  murders  of  many  unarmed 
civilians.  One  of  these,  already  referred  to  above,  was  a 
mere  boy,  guilty  of  no  military  offense  punishable  by  death. 
As  illustrating  the  methods  followed  by  officers  in  some  such 
cases  of  murder,  I  cite  two'  instances  vouched  for  by  com- 
petent and  respectable  eye-witnesses  frequently  seen  by  me. 

During  the  early  days  of  my  stay  at  the  front,  in  North- 
ern France,  I  visited  one  of  my  priests,  a  Catholic  chaplain, 
who  was  then  billeted,  with  two  other  New  Zealand  officers, 
at  a  better  class  of  farmhouse,  quite  close  to  the  trenches.  I 
had  been  informed  that  the  house-mother  there  was  witness 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE       9 

to  a  tragedy  that  had  been  reported  to  me.  I  found  her  to 
be  an  extremely  pious  Catholic  woman,  of  middle  age,  fairly 
educated,  and  speaking  better  French  than  is  common  among 
the  peasantry  of  that  region.  She  confirmed,  even  in  most 
details,  the  story  which  I  had  heard,  and  told  me,  in  sub- 
stance, what  follows : — Her  brother,  a  farmer,  lived  near 
by — a  quiet,  inoffensive  man,  very  industrious,  extremely 
careful  not  to  mix  himself  up  in  military  or  political  mat- 
ters, not  guilty  of  spying  or  any  civil  or  military  offense, 
and  immensely  devoted  to  his  wife  and  three  children.  While 
my  informant  was  on  a  visit  to  him,  there  entered  some 
German  officers.  One  of  them  (without  any  judicial  for- 
mality) drew  his  sword  and  severed  the  farmer's  hand  at 
the  wrist,  the  hand  dropping  to  the  floor.  They  then  fired 
three  revolver  shots  at  him,  two  of  the  shots  penetrating 
the  victim's  abdomen,  the  third  his  throat.  All  this  took 
place  in  the  presence  of  the  victim's  sister  (my  informant), 
and  of  his  wife  and  three  children,  all  of  whom  were  frantic 
with  horror  at  the  sudden  tragedy.  The  poor  man's  sister 
cried  to  him  :  "Oh,  brother,  you  are  dying ;  make  an  act  of 
sorrow  for  your  sins  and  of  love  of  God."  He  replied 
faintly:  "I  cannot,  sister;  say  them  for  me."  Then  his 
sister  knelt  beside  him  and  began  to  recite  the  prayers. 
When  she  was  so  engaged,  the  dying  man  cried  out :  "I  am 
done  for!"  and,  making  a  big  sign  of  the  Cross  over  him- 
self, began  to  recite  the  acts  of  sorrow  for  sin  and  of  love 
of  God.  And  so  he  died.  The  sorrow-riven  widow,  seem- 
ingly almost  unbalanced  by  grief,  left  the  scene  of  the 
tragedy,  and  lives  in  a  town  where  I  was  billeted  in  the 
mayor's  house  for  a  week.  In  that  town,  the  hostages  were 
killed,  as  already  described,  and  close  to  it  occurred  the  fur- 
ther outrages  to  which  reference  is  made  hereunder. 

A  little  over  a  mile  westward  from  the  town  last  re- 
ferred to,  there  stands,  close  together,  a  group  of  small 
farmhouses — some  of  them  at  one  time  billets  for  our  sol- 
diers. I  visited  some  of  them  from  time  to  time — one  of 
these  (not  a  billet)  being  the  home  of  a  widow  whose  hus- 
band had  also  been  cruelly  murdered  without  any  judicial 
formality,  by  German  officers.     He  had  hidden  under  some 


io     THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

hay  in  his  barn  as  soon  as  he  heard  the  rattle  of  German 
rifles  "shooting  up"  the  country  around  about.  (I  found 
a  rather  widespread  impression  among  the  peasantry,  for 
many  miles  around,  that  persons  running  away,  or  found 
hiding,  were  regularly  shot  on  sight  by  the  then  newly  ar- 
rived invaders.)  In  the  course  of  their  search  of  the  little 
farm  in  question,  they  discovered  the  hidden  man,  and  the 
officers  perforated  him  with  seven  revolver  bullets.  This  is 
the  statement  made  to  me  by  his  widow  and  by  the  family 
next  door  (only  some  twenty  yards  away ) ,  who  quite  plainly 
heard  the  shots  that  widowed  their  plundered  neighbor  and 
orphaned  her  children.  The  next  door  house  referred  to 
was  also  pretty  thoroughly  stripped,  but  the  occupying 
troops  did  not  otherwise  molest  the  house-mother  and  the 
five  delightful  little  children  there,  who  used  to  swarm  joy- 
ously about  me  when  I  visited  the  billets  near  by.  When, 
in  company  with  two  of  my  chattering  little  friends,  I  paid  a 
first  visit  of  sympathy  to  the  widow  of  the  murdered  man, 
she  was  busy  winnowing  peas  in  the  barn,  the  same  barn, 
grinding  heavily  on  the  handle  of  a  big  noisy  machine. 
Her  face  looked  towards  the  wall  furthest  from  me.  When 
she  had  finished  the  loaded  hopper,  she  turned  suddenly  at 
the  sound  of  my  greeting.  I  shall  carry  to  my  death  the 
agony  staring  out  of  her  eyes  and  set  in  the  closely  crowded 
wrinkles  prematurely  carved  by  grief,  and  the  utter  hope- 
lessness and  helplessness  that  marked  her  mechanically-told 
tale  of  swift  tragedy.  There  must  be  many  such  eyes  in 
France  and  Belgium,  that  shall  ever  be  riveted  upon  such 
sudden  horror,  until  death,  in  mercy,  closes  them. 

Of  the  various  other  cases  brought  to  my  notice,  I  will 
mention  only  those  that  follow : — In  the  neighboring  town 
(a  little  over  a  mile  away)  seventeen  civilians  were  (I  was 
informed  on  the  spot)  put  to  death  by  the  invaders;  in  a 
village  close  by,  several  others.  I  had  heard  a  great  deal 
about  a  ghastly  massacre  perpetrated  close  to  the  village  of 

D .     I  spent  part  of  a  January  day  investigating  the 

matter,  right  upon  the  spot,  and  among  those  (including 
the  parish  priest)  who  were  likely  to  furnish  me  with  reliable 
information.    I  learned,  in  substance,  that  eleven  flying  peas- 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE     n 

ants  (several  of  them  being  refugees  from  other  invaded 
districts)  were  "rounded  up"  a  few  hundred  yards  outside 
the  village,  compelled  (without  trial)  to  dig  a  big  pit,  and 
then  shot  into  it  by  a  party  of  Prussian  troops,  under  the 
direction  of  a  Prussian  colonel.  The  parish  priest  (who,  by 
the  way,  was  for  a  time  a  hostage)  showed  me  the  position 
of  the  pit  into  which  the  victims  were  shot.  It  is  in  an  open 
field,  outside  the  village.  Three  of  the  murdered  men,  local 
people,  were  exhumed  and  interred  in  consecrated  ground 
in  the  parish  cemetery,  beside  the  ruins  of  the  once  beautiful 
church  which  the  Prussians  fired  and  destroyed  on  the  eve 
of  their  retreat  before  the  advancing  French.  A  Prussian 
major  assured  the  parish  priest  (so  the  latter  informed 
me)  that  the  civilian  population  of  the  place  had  not  fired 
upon  or  molested  the  invaders.  Such  a  course  of  action 
would,  indeed,  have  been  an  act  of  supreme  folly  on  the 
part  of  the  women,  children,  and  the  few  men  (mostly  old 
or  unfit)  left  at  the  time  in  those  French  countrysides — espe- 
cially in  view  of  the  well-known  and  oft-proclaimed  meth- 
ods of  proscription  and  terrorism  with  which  any  civilian 
interference  would  be  avenged,  even  upon  the  innocent,  as 
was  done  in  the  well-remembered  days  of  1870.  In  view 
of  this  well-known  German  policy,  the  local  authorities  at 

D (and  in  these  parts  of  France  generally,  so  far  as  I 

know)  seized  the  few  shotguns  and  other  weapons  of  offense 
in  each  commune,  and  stored  them,  under  lock  and  key,  in 
the  Mairie,  whenever  there  arose  any  probability  of  the  early 
arrival  of  the  invaders.  In  a  town  in  which  I  was  billeted,  it 
was  suggested  or  asserted  by  German  officers  that  shots 
were  fired  by  civilians.  This,  however,  was  hotly  denied 
by  prominent  citizens,  and  one  mayor  assured  me  (as  he  had 
previously  assured  these  officers)  that  the  shots  complained 
of  were  fired,  in  his  full  view,  by  organized  French  troops 
in  retreat.  That,  however,  did  not  save  the  place  from  enor- 
mous levies.  And  both  the  clergy  and  the  civil  authorities 
rather  frequently  voice  the  conviction  that  such  accusations 
were  merely  a  pretext  for  pursuing  the  German  State  policy 
of  "ruthlessness"  and  "terrorismus"  in  the  form  of  ex- 
actions in  blood  and  coin.    In  any  case,  I  was  assured,  many 


12     THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

times  over,  that  no  proper  trial,  or  no  judicial  proceeding 
of  any  sort,  preceded  the  penalty  of  death  or  of  confiscatory 
levies.  The  "German  War  Book"  declares  that  the  slay- 
ing of  prisoners  is  sometimes  "expedient" — although  it 
acknowledges  the  proceedings  to  be  always  "ugly."  But 
even  a  civilian  prisoner  does  not  lightly  lose,  either  by  nat- 
ural law  or  international  convention,  his  right  to  a  fair  trial 
before  forfeiting  his  life. 

And  even  if  attacks  were  really  made  by  individuals 
upon  the  invaders,  the  Prussian  method  of  inflicting  gen- 
eral penalties,  in  such  cases,  is  forbidden  by  Article  50  of 
the  Hague  Convention :  "No  collective  penalty,  pecuniary 
or  otherwise,  shall  be  inflicted  upon  the  population  on  ac- 
count of  the  acts  of  individuals,  for  which  it  cannot  be  re- 
garded as  collectively  responsible."  But  a  wide  range  of 
tragic  outrage  and  wrong  is  left  to  the  discretion  of  officers 
in  the  following  words  of  sweeping  menace  contained  in  the 
official  Introduction  to  the  "German  War  Book"  :  "Certain 
severities  are  indispensable  in  war;  nay,  more,  true  hu- 
manity very  often  lies  in  a  ruthless  application  of  them." 
But  neither  militarist  sanction,  nor  even  the  plea  of  "or- 
ders," can  be  held  to  justify  "inherently  immoral''  acts  of 
violence  and  inhumanity. 

Some  "Not  Bad" 

Everywhere  that  I  went,  both  in  France  and  Belgium, 
I  found  that  the  people  asserted  differences  in  conduct  among 
the  various  national  elements  of  the  German  army  of  oc- 
cupation. Even  among  French  soldiers  and  some  veterans 
of  the  war  of  1870,  I  met  sometimes  with  good  words,  some- 
times with  merely  negative  and  comparative  commendation, 
for  Rhinelanders,  Saxons,  and  a  few  others.  I  came  across 
a  certain  number  of  cases  in  which  both  German  officers 
and  men  were,  for  instance,  ashamed  of  the  evil  work  of 
State-organized  plunder.  And  this  was  especially  the  case 
where  they  were  billeted  upon,  and  kindly  treated  by,  the 
people  whose  homes  they  were  ordered  to  pillage.  In  such 
cases,  the  work  of  plunder,  although  carried  out,  was  gen- 
erally by  no  means  so  searching  and  merciless  as  it  too  fre- 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE     13 

quently  was  elsewhere.  Regarding  such  troops,  the  people 
would  remark  that  they  were  "not  bad,"  "not  at  all  bad," 
that  there  were  some  "quite  respectable  men  among  them," 
and  that  this  or  that  officer  was  "courteous"  or  "amiable," 
etc.  Yet  even  the  least  objectionable  of  the  invaders  seem 
to  have,  under  "orders,"  inflicted  rather  severe  ordeals 
upon  the  people. 

I  had  read  a  number  of  statements  to  the  discredit  of 
the  Bavarian  troops  during  the  early  part  of  the  war.  I 
was,  therefore,  quite  unprepared  for  the  practically  uni- 
versal verdict  in  their  favor  all  over  those  invaded  parts  of 
the  war-zone  where  I  was  in  touch  with  the  civilian  popu- 
lation. These  troops  may  or  may  not  have  been  average 
samples  of  the  Bavarian  armies.  On  that  point  I  venture 
no  expression  of  opinion.  But  this  I  know :  that,  over  the 
districts  where  I  found  they  had  been  in  occupation,  the 
unfailing  answer  to  inquiries  was  to  this  effect :  That, 
among  the  invaders  of  these  parts,  the  Bavarians  were  the 
most  inclined  to  consideration  and  mercy  in  the  gathering 
of  spoil,  less  given  than  others  to  the  "shooting  up"  of 
civilians,  and,  in  billets,  comparatively  unobjectionable.  The 
statement  (published  in  British  papers  early  in  the  war) 
was  several  times  re-told  to  me  in  France,  that  two  Ba- 
varian regiments  had  mutinied  against  the  execution  of  some 
of  the  "frightfulness"  orders  given  in  Belgium,  and  had 
been  transferred  elsewhere;  and  some  instances  were  men- 
tioned to  me  of  real  kindness,  on  their  part,  towards  the 
people. 

I  mentioned  this  unexpectedly  favorable  verdict  regard- 
ing Bavarians  to  a  British  officer  occupying  an  important 
position  in  Belgium :  he  was  one  of  the  comparatively  few 
who  spoke  French,  and,  practically  from  the  beginning  of 
the  war,  mixed  freely  with  the  people  in  (among  others) 
the  selfsame  areas  as  were  covered  by  my  experiences  at 
the  front.  He  assured  me  that  his  information,  derived 
from  the  people,  expressed,  on  every  side,  the  same  opinion. 
And  he  told  me  the  following  illustrative  case,  which  was 
afterwards  repeated  to  me,  in  substance,  by  some  residents 
near  the  spot : 


i4     THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

This  British  officer's  story  relates  to  a  now  battered  and 
uninhabited  farmhouse,  at  present  within  our  lines.  For 
over  a  month  I  visited  it  or  passed  by  it  almost  daily,  on 
my  way  to  or  from  the  fire-trench.  During  the  German 
occupation,  the  farm-buildings  were  used  for  a  time  as 
billets  for  a  detachment  of  Bavarians.  Just  before  their 
arrival  there,  the  house-mother  had  died,  leaving  several 
helpless  little  children.  The  Bavarians  told  the  bereaved 
father  that  he  might  pursue  serenely  his  usual  outdoor  oc- 
cupations, and  that  they,  in  the  meantime,  would  look  after 
the  household  and  the  motherless  little  ones.  The  cooking, 
washing,  tidying-up,  etc.,  were  (I  was  assured)  carried  out 
with  great,  fastidious  care;  the  house  was  a  picture,  the 
children  shining  examples  of  neatness  and  greatly  attached 
to  the  big,  hefty  fellows  from  beyond  the  Rhine. 

The  Prussians 

I  met  several  French  civilians  who  spoke  not  unkindly 
of  individual  Prussian  soldiers  who  had  been  billeted  upon 
them.  I  met  one,  and  only  one  Frenchman  in  my  experi- 
ence who  spoke  well  of  a  Prussian  officer.  That  w?s  the 
parish  priest  (already  referred  to),  and  he  spoke  very 
kindly  indeed  of  the  Prussian  major  already  mentioned  in 
the  course  of  this  letter.  But  in  regard  to  the  other  Prus- 
sian officers  with  whom  he  had  come  into  contact,  his 
mildest  expression  was  that  they  were  all  "arrogant"  and 
"evil-mannered."  For  the  rest,  I  made  numerous  other  in- 
quiries regarding  Prussian  officers,  as  distinguished  from 
officers  of  other  sections  of  the  German  army.  Such  in- 
quiries or  remarks  were  ordinarily  met  with  set  lips  and 
flashing  eye;  with  declarations  that,  though  the  Prussian 
private  was  sometimes  "not  bad,"  the  Prussian  officers  were 
the  most  ruthless  in  pillage  and  the  murder  of  civilians ;  and 
with  such  epithets  (hundreds  of  times  repeated)  as  "brutal," 
"merciless,"  and  (over  and  over  again)  ce  sont  tons  des 
barbares — mais  tons,  tons  (they  are  all  barbarians,  all, 
all).  The  general  verdict,  as  expressed  to  me,  was  that  the 
worst  and  most  callous  violators  of  the  usages  of  civilized 
warfare  were  the  Prussian  officers,  and  that  the  worst  of  the 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE     15 

Prussians  were  the  Pomeranians,  both  officers  and  men. 
In  this  connection,  it  is,  perhaps,  a  curious  coincidence  that, 
East  Prussia  is  the  home  of  the  system  known  as  "Prussian- 
ism,"  which  has  overlain  Germany  and  organized  the  Em- 
pire, less  as  a  State  than  as  an  Army  bent  on  conquest. 

The  usually  magnificent  calm  of  French  patience  often 
breaks  into  a  glow  of  hate  when  the  Prussians  and  their 
ways  are  mentioned.  With  sundry  other  nationalities  of 
the  German  Empire,  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  peasantry  of 
those  regions  felt  that,  under  happier  auspices,  they  might 
live,  in  peace,  as  neighbors,  in  a  neighborly  way.  I  thus 
gathered  that,  even  amidst  the  fierce  resentments  aroused 
by  such  methods  of  warfare,  the  Northern  French  peasant 
is  often  able  to  judge  as  does  President  Wilson,  between  the 
German  people  and  the  Prussian  military  oligarchy.  These, 
and  their  methods  of  pagan  "frightfulness,"  have  seared 
the  brain  and  soul  of  the  Flandrian  populations. 

Destruction  of  Churches 

From  townsfolk,  villagers,  peasantry,  British  officers 
and  others  I  learned  that  the  German  method  of  dealing  with 
churches  proceeded  generally  along  the  following  lines  in 
the  parts  of  France  under  consideration  here :  When  a  re- 
treat from  a  hamlet,  village,  or  town  seemed  to  them  an 
early  likelihood,  the  German  officers  in  command  requisi- 
tioned all  the  kerosene  and  benzine  around  about,  intro- 
duced straw,  firewood,  and  other  inflammable  material  into 
the  church,  piled  up  chairs,  benches,  etc.,  flooded  the  place 
as  well  as  they  could  with  the  liquid,  and  then  set  the  whole 
thing  alight.  They  also,  at  times,  distributed  explosives 
in  places  where  they  were  calculated  to  increase  the  damage. 
In  sundry  cases  it  was  evident  to  even  the  most  casual 
observer  that  the  building  was  of  little  or  no  use  for  purposes 
of  military  observation  or  offense,  being  without  tower, 
spire,  or  other  such  feature,  and  being  overlooked  (in  some 
cases  which  I  noted)  by  taller  buildings.  Occasionally,  one 
sees  only  one  building  in  a  village  burned  down — it  is  the 
church.  More  numerous  still  are  the  churches  destroyed 
by  German  guns  firing  high  explosive  shells.     I  ascertained 


16     THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

that,  in  several  cases,  the  church  towers  had  been  used  by 
both  French  and  Germans  in  turn  for  observation  purposes. 
In  such  cases,  the  destruction  of  the  observation  post  was  a 
legitimate,  though  regrettable,  military  measure.  But  one 
curiously  frequent  and  significant  fact  struck  me  in  connec- 
tion with  the  churches  burned  down  or  otherwise  destroyed 
by  retreating  German  troops  in  the  area  of  France  to  which 
I  refer.  It  is  this :  Over  a  wide  area,  nearly  every  tower 
was  left  standing,  a  conspicuous  landmark  in  the  flat  land- 
scape. With  a  minimum  of  trouble,  they  could  have  all 
been  immediately  used  for  observation  purposes  by  the  ad- 
vancing French  troops.  The  spires,  where  present,  were 
burned  down  or  blown  down;  and  the  towers  in  question 
could  easily  have  been  in  great  part  demolished  by  high  ex- 
plosives, such  as  were  sometimes  used  upon  the  walls.  But 
they  were  left,  and  still  they  stand.  And  it  is  assumed  that 
they  were  spared  for  a  German  military  purpose,  namely, 
to  serve  as  useful  landmarks  for  "ranging"  the  German  ar- 
tillery. In  one  small  area  visited  by  me,  close  to  our  lines, 
six  churches  were  destroyed.  Two  of  the  priests  were  killed, 
and  a  third  had  an  extremely  narrow  escape. 

Mention  might  here  be  made  of  a  peculiar  form  of 
"frightfulness"  followed  by  the  Germans  in  destroying  some 
of  the  churches  in  this  district  by  high  explosive  shells. 
After  a  vigorous,  accurate,  and  destructive  bombardment  of 
one  church  only  (other  buildings  around  being  left  com- 
paratively little  damaged)  the  firing  suddenly  ceased  for  a 
time.  The  parishioners  (a  very  pious  population  here- 
abouts) felt  confident  that  the  bombardment  was  at  an  end, 
and  they  gradually  assembled  in  and  around  their  church  to 
see  and  estimate  the  damage  done.  The  vast  majority  of 
the  gatherings  naturally  consisted  of  women,  children,  and 
old  men — the  fit  men  of  military  age  being  away  in  camp  or 
billet  or  trench.  Suddenly,  without  warning,  the  German 
guns  broke  out  again,  this  time  in  a  furious  tempest  of 
shrapnel,  with  results  to  the  civilian  population  which  you 
can  well  imagine.  I  heard  of  this  form  of  "ruthlessness" 
from  a  number  of  persons,  and  (as  regards  one  very  con- 
siderable center  of  population)   from  some  New  Zealand 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE     17 

officers  who  were  present,  as  well  as  from  one  of  the  priests 
of  my  diocese,  a  military  chaplain,  who  witnessed  the  de- 
struction, by  these  means,  of  one  church  of  great  beauty 
from  his  billet  in  the  same  square. 

Various  Crimes 

Article  44  of  the  Hague  Regulations  says :  "Any  com- 
pulsion, by  a  belligerent,  on  the  population  of  occupied  ter- 
ritory, to  give  information  as  to  the  army  of  the  other  bel- 
ligerent, or  as  to  his  means  of  defense,  is  prohibited."  This 
just  and  humane  provision  is  one  of  the  many  such  repudi- 
ated in  the  "German  War  Book."  It  says  in  Part  II,  Chap- 
ter I :  "A  still  more  severe  measure  is  the  compulsion  of 
the  inhabitants  to  furnish  information  about  their  own 
army,  its  strategy,  its  resources,  and  its  military  secrets.  The 
majority  of  writers  of  all  nations  are  unanimous  in  their 
condemnation  of  this  measure.  Nevertheless,  it  cannot  be 
entirely  dispensed  with;  doubtless  it  will  be  applied  with 
regret,  but  the  argument  of  war  will  frequently  make  it 
necessary." 

The  compulsory  betrayal  of  a  country  by  its  invaded  in- 
habitants is  thus,  quite  properly,  forbidden  by  the  Hague 
Regulations.  They  also  (Articles  23  and  52)  forbid  the 
forcing  of  the  inhabitants  of  an  occupied  region  to  engage 
in  work  designed  to  injure  their  country.  The  official  "Ger- 
man War  Book"  also  treats  as  "a  scrap  of  paper"  this 
valued  provision  of  Christian  and  civilized  warfare,  and  it 
authorizes  such  unjust  compulsion  of  civilians  even  to  the 
extent  of  "shooting  some  of  them"  in  case  of  refusal  (Part 
II,  Chapter  I).  During  my  stay  in  France  I  heard  a 
few  vague  allegations  of  attempted  compulsion  under  both 
these  heads,  but  no  time  was  left  to  investigate  them.  I 
merely  set  down  here  the  provision  officially  made  for  such 
very  terrible  forms  of  compulsion.  The  evidence  recently 
supplied  shows  that,  in  point  of  fact,  Belgian  and  French 
deportees  were  compelled  to  engage  (even  in  the  fire-area) 
in  work  designed  to  injure  their  respective  countries. 

The  same  official  "War  Book"  approves  of  certain 
other  resorts  "on  which,"  says  Professor  Morgan,  "Inter- 

w.,  VOL.  III.— 2. 


18     THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

national  Law  is  silent  because  it  will  not  admit  the  possi- 
bility of  their  existence"  among  civilized  peoples.  I  refer 
to  the  German  War  Lord's  sanction  of  "the  exploitation  of 
the  crimes  of  third  parties  (assassination,  incendiarism, 
robbery,  and  the  like)  to  the  prejudice  of  an  enemy."  This 
sufficiently  explains  certain  forms  of  German  official  activ- 
ity in  the  United  States.  The  "War  Book"  seeks  to  justify 
the  "inherently  immoral"  exploitation  of  crime  by  the  fol- 
lowing un-Christian  doctrine  of  Professor  Lueder :  "The 
ugly  and  inherently  immoral  aspect  of  such  methods  cannot 
affect  the  recognition  of  their  lawfulness.  The  necessary 
aim  of  war  gives  the  belligerent  the  right  and  imposes  upon 
him,  according  to  circumstances,  the  duty  not  to  let  slip  the 
important — it  may  be  the  decisive — advantages  to  be  gained 
by  such  means." 

Conclusion 

In  view  of  the  "War  Book's"  repudiation  of  so  many 
principles  and  methods  of  civilized  warfare,  it  seems,  to 
some  extent,  superfluous  to  adduce  evidence  of  "ruthless- 
ness"  and  "terrorization"  by  armies  trained  and  acting  un- 
der its  instructions.  The  Prussian  militarists'  "War  Book" 
is,  in  effect,  the  expression  of  armed  materialism  running 
amok.  It  provides  for,  or  permits,  or  supposes,  practically 
every  form  of  "f rightfulness"  laid  to  the  charge  of  "Prus- 
sianism"  during  this  great  struggle;  so  far  as  lies  in  its 
power,  it  flings  aside  the  precious  results  of  the  Church's 
centuries  of  effort  (crystallized  and  extended  in  interna- 
tional conventions)  to  mitigate  the  atrocities  of  pagan  war- 
fare. 

With  human  nature  as  it  is,  war  has  more  than  suffi- 
cient horror,  even  when  hedged  around  about  by  the  re- 
strictions called  for  by  chivalry,  Christian  moral  principles, 
and  international  agreements.  In  the  mass  of  men  engaged 
in  war  there  will  also  ever  be  some  who  will  fall  at  times 
short  of  the  ideals  that  become  the  Christian  warrior.  But 
just  as  surely,  in  the  stress  of  war,  will  many  tend  to  fall 
below  the  lower,  as  before  the  higher,  ideal  of  soldierly 
right  and  duty ;  and  depth  will  naturally  and  inevitably  call 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE     19 

to  depth  in  the  practical  application  of  the  hard,  crude  ma- 
terialism of  the  Prussian  military  code.  And,  just  as  nat- 
urally, such  forms  of  military  "fright fulness"  as  it  sanctions 
or  directs,  tend  to  increase  in  number  and  intensity,  to  the 
progressive  degradation  of  war.  We  witness  the  further 
developments  of  this  tendency  in  the  deliberate  sinking  of 
Belgian  relief  ships,  in  the  large  deportations  of  unprotected 
girls  in  France  and  Belgium  (against  which  the  Holy  See 
has  raised  its  voice  in  protest),  and  (not  to  mention  other 
things)  in  the  open  and  repeated  destruction  of  hospital 
ships  and  the  attempted  slaughter  of  wounded  soldiers  and 
nurses  upon  the  high  seas — in  direct  violation  of  Hague 
Convention,  No.  10.  The  fundamental  issue  now  is  this: 
Are  we,  or  are  we  not,  to  hold  what  is  still  safe,  and  to  re- 
store what  is  being  lost,  of  Christian  and  civilized  inter- 
course between  nation  and  nation? 

BY  THE   FRENCH   CIVIL  AUTHORITIES 

L.  Mirman,  Prefect;  G.  Simon,  Mayor  of  Nancy;  G.  Keller,  Mayor 

of  Luneville 

This  is  a  statement  of  horrors,  but  a  statement  of  plain 
truths !  Where  have  we  discovered  our  facts  ?  They  are 
taken  from  three  sources:  First,  Four  reports  issued  by 
the  French  Commission  of  Inquiry;1  and  "Germany's  Vio- 
lation of  the  Laws  of  Warfare,"  published  by  the  French 
Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs;  Second,  Two  volumes  con- 
taining twenty-two  reports  of  the  Belgian  Commission, 
and  the  Reply  to  the  German  "White  Book"  of  May  15, 
191 5  ;  Third,  Notebooks  found  upon  a  large  number  of  Ger- 
man soldiers,  non-commissioned  officers,  and  officers,  who 
have  been  wounded  or  taken  prisoners,  and  translated  under 
the  direction  of  the  French  Government.  These  valuable 
records,  in  which  the  bandits  and  their  leaders  have  impru- 
dently given  themselves  away,  are  real  "pieces  a  conviction." 

These  reports  in  their  entirety  form  an  overwhelming 
indictment.     We  wish  that  every  one  could  study  them  in 

1  The  members  of  this  Commission  were  MM.  G.  Payelle  (Premier 
President  de  la  Cour  des  Comptes),  A.  Mollard  (Ministre  Plenipoten- 
tiaire),  G.  Maringer  (Conseiller  d'Etat),  E.  Paillot  (Conseiller  a  la 
Cour  de  Cassation). 


20     THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

full.     But  the  books  are  large,  running  to  thousands  of 
pages,  and  will  not  find  their  way  to  the  general  public. 

Yet  every  one  ought  to  know  how  the  Germans  carry  on 
war.  We  have  therefore  made  selections  from  these  docu- 
ments in  order  to  compile  this  brief  statement.  A  dismal 
task,  this  wading  through  mud  and  blood !  And  a  hard  task, 
to  run  through  all  these  reports,  pencil  in  hand,  with  the 
idea  of  underlining  the  essential  facts!  You  find  yourself 
noting  down  each  page,  marking  each  paragraph;  and,  lo 
and  behold,  at  the  end  of  the  book,  you  have  selected  every- 
thing— that  is  to  say,  nothing.  One  might  as  well  start  to 
gather  the  hundred  finest  among  the  leaves  of  a  forest,  01 
to  pick  up  the  hundred  most  glittering  grains  among  the 
sand  on  a  beach.  All  we  can  do  is  to  take  the  first  examples 
which  come  to  hand.  This,  then,  is  not  a  collection  of  the 
most  stirring  and  striking  German  crimes,  but  simply  a  book 
of  samples.  Two  classes  of  outrage  stand  out,  and  must 
remain  ever  present  to  the  mind :  murdered  civilians  can 
be  counted  in  thousands;  houses  willfully  burned,  in  tens 
of  thousands. 

Robbery 

We  shall  not  waste  time  over  the  looting  of  cellars,  of 
larders,  of  poultry  yards,  of  linen-chests,  or  of  whatever 
can  be  consumed  promptly,  or  immediately  made  use  of 
by  the  troops — all  these  are  the  merest  trifles.  Let  us  also 
dismiss  pillage,  organized  on  a  large  scale  by  the  authorities, 
of  all  sorts  of  raw  material  and  industrial  machinery :  the 
bill  on  this  score  will  come  to  several  thousand  million 
francs.  Let  us  likewise  put  aside  official  robberies,  com- 
mitted by  governors  of  towns,  or  provinces,  from  municipal 
treasuries  (even  the  treasury  of  the  Red  Cross  at  Brussels 
was  robbed),  usually  under  the  form  of  fines,  or  of  taxes 
imposed  under  transparent  pretenses.  There  again  there 
will  be  millions  to  recover. 

We  shall  deal  here  with  personal  robberies  only,  as  dis- 
tinct from  the  pilfering  carried  on  by  hungry  soldiers,  dis- 
tinct too  from  the  regular  contributions  levied  on  a  con- 
quered country  by  an  unscrupulous  administration.     These 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE     21 

robberies  are  innumerable,  committed  sometimes  by  private 
soldiers,  but  often  by  officers,  doctors,  and  high  officials. 
Here  are  some  examples : 

(1)  Soldier  thieves:  They  are  rougher  in  their  deal- 
ings, and  kill  those  who  offer  resistance.  It  is  a  case  of 
"Your  money  or  your  life."  Madame  Maupoix,  aged  75, 
living  at  Triaucourt,  was  kicked  to  death  while  soldiers 
ransacked  her  cupboards.  Monsieur  Dalissier,  aged  73,  be- 
longing to  Congis,  was  summoned  to  give  up  his  purse :  he 
declared  that  he  had  no  money;  they  tied  him  up  with  a 
rope  and  fired  fifteen  shots  into  his  body.  Let  us  pass  quickly 
over  the  "soldier  thief" — merely  small  fry! 

(2)  Officer  thieves:  At  Baron,  an  officer  compelled  the 
notary  to  open  his  safe,  and  stole  money  and  jewelry  from 
it.  Another,  after  going  through  several  houses,  was  seen 
wearing  on  his  wrists  and  ringers  six  bracelets  and  nine 
rings  belonging  to  women.  Soldiers  who  brought  their 
officer  a  stolen  jewel  received  a  reward  of  four  shillings. 
The  robberies  at  Baccarat  and  Creil  were  "directed"  by  offi- 
cers. At  Creil,  a  captain  tried  to  induce  Guillot  and  De- 
monts  to  point  out  the  houses  of  the  richest  inhabitants,  and 
their  refusal  cost  them  harsh  treatment.  At  Fosse,  a  French 
military  doctor  in  charge  of  an  ambulance,  conveying  two 
hundred  patients,  and  himself  wounded,  was  arrested  and 
taken  before  a  captain.  The  captain  told  the  doctor  that  he 
would  have  him  shot,  and  meanwhile  opened  the  doctor's 
tunic  with  his  own  hand,  took  out  his  pocketbook  and  appro- 
priated the  400  francs  he  found  in  it. 

Officers  and  privates  sometimes  share  the  stolen  money. 
From  a  diary  belonging  to  a  titled  Lieutenant  of  the  Guards, 
let  us  quote  this  note :  "Fosse.  Village  entirely  burnt. 
The  7th  Company  made  2,000  francs  in  booty."  From  an- 
other officer's  notebook:  "More  than  3,000  francs  booty 
for  the  battalion." 

Another  diary,  after  the  sacking  of  a  place,  gives  a  de- 
tailed account  of  the  distribution  thus :  "460  francs  for 
the  first  lieutenant,  390  francs  for  the  second  lieutenant, 


etc." 


(3)  Doctor  thieves:    At  Choisy-au-Bac,  two  army  doc- 


22     THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

tors,  wearing  their  brassards,  personally  sacked  the  house  of 
a  family  named  Binder.  At  Chateau-Thierry  some  doctors 
were  made  prisoners :  their  mess-tins  were  opened  and  found 
to  be  full  of  stolen  articles.  After  Morhange,  a  French  doc- 
tor of  the  20th  Corps  remained  in  the  German  lines  to  be 
near  his  wounded.  He  was  accosted  by  one  of  his  German 
"confreres,"  who  with  his  own  hands  stole  his  watch  and 
pocketbook. 

At  Raon-sur-Plaine,  after  the  retreat  of  our  troops,  Dr. 
Schneider  remained  behind  with  thirty  wounded.  Next  day 
up  came  a  German  ambulance  with  Professor  Vulpius,  a 
well-known  German  scientist  of  Heidelberg  University,  who 
must  have  presided  over  many  international  medical  con- 
gresses. As  soon  as  he  was  installed,  "Herr  Professor" 
intimated  to  his  French  fellow-doctors  that  he  was  "going 
to  begin  with  a  small  customary  formality."  The  for- 
mality was  a  simple  one :  his  colleagues  were  to  hand  over 
to  him  "all  the  money  they  had  on  them."  "I  strongly  pro- 
tested" (declared  the  French  doctor,  on  oath),  "but  we  were 
compelled  to  hand  over  our  purses  and  all  their  contents. 
Having  relieved  us  in  this  way,  he  turned  to  our  poor 
wounded,  who  were  all  searched  and  stripped  of  their 
money.  There  was  nothing  to  be  done :  we  were  in  the 
hands,  not  of  a  doctor,  but  of  a  regular  brute." 

(4)  Royal  thieves:  After  living  about  a  week  in  a 
chateau  near  Liege,  H.R.H.  Prince  Eitel  Fritz,  the  Duke 
of  Brunswick,  and  another  nobleman  of  less  importance, 
had  all  the  dresses  that  could  be  found  in  the  wardrobes 
belonging  to  the  lady  of  the  house  and  her  daughters 
packed  up  before  their  own  eyes,  and  sent  to  Germany. 

These  thieves  are  often  facetious:  they  give  as  compen- 
sation a  so-called  receipt  or  bond  (in  German,  of  course), 
which  means,  "Good  for  a  hundred  lashes,"  or  "Good  for 
two  rabbits,"  or  "To  be  shot,"  or  "Payable  in  Paris." 
They  are  also  disgusting.  In  houses  robbed  by  them  they 
leave,  by  way  of  visiting  cards,  excrement  in  beds,  on  tables, 
and  in  cupboards. 

These  thieves  have  a  partiality  for  safes,  and  in  this 
connection  the  story  of  Luneville  deserves  recording.     A 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE     23 

house  near  the  station,  belonging  to  M.  Leclerc,  was  set  on 
fire;  the  walls  alone  remained  standing,  and  in  one  of  them 
(on  the  second  floor)  a  safe  was  left  intact.  A  non-com- 
missioned officer,  named  Weill,  with  a  party  blew  up  the 
wall  with  dynamite,  and  the  safe  was  extricated  from  the 
rubbish,  carried  to  the  station,  put  on  a  truck,  and  sent  to 
Boche-land.  This  man  Weill,  before  the  war,  often  came 
to  Luneville  on  business  with  hops,  was  always  well  re- 
ceived there,  made  himself  agreeable  and  knew  everybody. 
When  the  Germans  settled  in  the  unfortunate  town  he  played 
a  very  important  part,  in  spite  of  his  low  rank,  in  acting  as 
agent,  confidential  clerk  and  guide  to  the  Commanding  Of- 
ficer. 

The  robbers  are  also  business-like  in  their  transport 
arrangements  as  to  carriages,  military  wagons,  lorries,  and 
motor  cars.  At  Compiegne,  where  the  home  of  the  Orsetti 
family  was  sacked,  silver  plate,  jewelry  and  articles  of  value 
were  collected  in  the  courtyard  of  the  chateau,  then  clas- 
sified, registered,  packed  and  "put  into  two  carts,  upon  which 
they  took  care  to  place  the  Red  Cross  flag."  We  read  in 
the  notebook  of  a  wounded  German  soldier,  under  medical 
treatment  at  Brussels,  "A  car  has  arrived  at  the  hospital, 
bringing  war  booty,  a  piano,  two  sewing  machines  and  all 
sorts  of  other  things." 

In  1870,  our  clocks  were  in  most  demand;  now,  pianos 
form  the  attraction,  and  an  immense  number  have  been  sent 
to  Germany.  They  are  the  article  particularly  favored  by 
the  Boche  ladies.  In  a  chateau  retaken  by  our  troops,  an 
officer  left  behind  a  letter  from  his  wife,  in  which  is  writ- 
ten, "A  thousand  thanks  for  the  beautiful  things  you  sent 
me.  The  furs  are  magnificent,  the  rosewood  furniture  is 
exquisite;  but  don't  forget  that  Elsa  is  always  waiting  for 
her  piano." 

These  women,  however,  are  not  all  as  patient  in  waiting 
as  Elsa.  They  frequently  come  and  choose  for  themselves, 
and  preside  over  the  packing.  They  have  been  seen  arriving 
in  motor  cars  from  Strasbourg  or  Metz,  at  many  towns  in 
Lorraine,  at  Luneville,  Baccarat,  and  elsewhere. 

All  notebooks,  more  or  less,  contain  such  items  as  these : 


24     THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

"Wholsale  pillage  and  abundant  loot,"  "Everything  de- 
stroyed or  sacked,"  "Looting  going  strong,"  "Played  the 
piano;  looting  going  strong."  This  very  German  formula 
frequently  occurs,  "Methodically  plundered."  And  again, 
"We  have  been  allowed  to  plunder;  we  didn't  require  to  be 
told  twice :  whole  bales  of  loot." 

"Rcthel.  The  Vandals  could  not  have  done  better." 
(The  officer  who  makes  this  indiscreet  admission  and  seems 
to  protest  against  the  thefts  committed,  writes  on  the  fol- 
lowing page :  "I  have  found  a  silk  rainproof  coat  and  a 
camera  for  Felix.") 

"Convey.  The  village,  and  the  workmen's  cottages 
looted  and  sacked.  Atrocious.  There  is  something,  after 
all,  in  what  they  say  of  German  barbarians." 

"Ottignies.  The  village  was  pillaged.  The  blond  beast 
has  made  plain  what  he  is.  The  Huns  and  the  free-lances  of 
the  Middle  Ages  could  not  have  done  better." 

"Cirey.  During  the  night  incredible  things  were  done : 
shops  sacked,  money  stolen,  rapes :  enough  to  make  one's 
hair  stand  on  end." 

Incendiarism 

In  order  to  punish  imaginary  crimes,  attributed  to  in- 
dividuals or  townships,  or  without  even  taking  the  trouble 
to  discover  any  kind  of  pretext,  the  Germans  often,  espe- 
cially after  looting,  set  everything  on  fire  so  as  to  make  all 
traces  disappear.  Sometimes,  as  at  Courtaqon,  they  com- 
pelled the  inhabitants  to  provide  the  material  for  burning 
their  own  houses;  or,  as  at  Recquignies,  forced  prisoners 
"to  set  the  houses  of  the  doctor  and  mayor  on  fire  with 
lighted  straw."  But  generally  they  do  the  work  themselves. 
They  have  a  special  service  for  this,  and  all  the  requisite  in- 
cendiary material  is  carefully  prepared ;  torches,  grenades, 
fuses,  oil  pumps,  firebrands,  satchels  of  pastilles  containing 
very  inflammable  compressed  powder,  etc.  German  science 
has  applied  itself  to  the  perfecting  of  the  technic  of  incen- 
diarism. The  village  is  set  alight  by  a  drilled  method. 
Those  concerned  act  quite  coolly,  as  a  matter  of  duty,  as 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE     25 

though  in  accordance  with  a  drill  scheme  laid  down  and 
perfected  beforehand. 

Of  course,  fire  once  let  loose,  these  people  have  to  see 
that  it  does  its  work  completely :  accordingly,  at  Louvain, 
they  destroyed  the  fire-engines  and  fire-escapes ;  at  Namur, 
they  stopped  the  firemen  at  the  very  moment  they  were  pre- 
paring to  do  their  duty. 

In  this  way  they  sometimes  willfully  burned  down  whole 
blocks  of  dwellings  (Luneville)  :  sometimes  an  entire  dis- 
trict (105  houses  at  Senlis,  112  at  Baccarat)  :  sometimes 
almost  a  whole  town  itself  (more  than  300  houses  at  Ger- 
beviller,  800  at  Sermaize).  On  other  occasions  they  did 
not  leave  a  house  standing  (Nomeny,  Clermont-en-Ar- 
gonne,  Sommeilles). 

The  complete  list  of  buildings,  cottages,  farms,  villas, 
factories,  or  chateaux,  burned  willfully  in  this  way  by  hand, 
will  be  a  formidable  one,  amounting  to  tens  of  thousands. 

Refinement  of  cruelty  frequently  occurs.  At  Aerschot 
"women  had  to  witness  the  sight  of  the  conflagration  hold- 
ing their  hands  up.  Their  torture  lasted  six  hours."  At 
Crevic,  the  Germans  began  their  sinister  work  by  burning 
a  chateau  which  they  knew  belonged  to  General  Lyautey. 
The  troops,  commanded  by  an  officer,  shouted  out  for  Ma- 
dame and  Mademoiselle  Lyautey  "that  they  might  cut  their 
heads  off." 

The  houses  destroyed  by  fire  were  not  always  unin- 
habited. At  Maixe,  M.  Demange,  wounded  in  both  knees, 
dragged  himself  along  and  fell  prostrate  in  his  kitchen ;  his 
house  was  set  on  fire  and  Madame  Demange  was  forcibly 
prevented  from  going  to  the  rescue  of  her  husband,  who 
perished  in  the  flames.  At  Nomeny,  Madame  Cousin,  after 
being  shot,  was  thrown  into  the  burning  building  and 
roasted.  At  the  same  place,  M.  Adam  was  thrown  alive 
into  the  flames.  Let  us  note  in  common  with  him,  to  their 
credit,  an  act  of  comparative  humanity.  Finding  that  the 
unhappy  man  was  not  being  burnt  fast  enough,  they  ended 
his  misery  in  the  flames  by  shooting  him.  At  Monceau-sur- 
Sambre,  where  they  set  fire  to  300  houses,  they  confined 


26     THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

the  two  brothers  S.  in  a  shed,  and  the  unfortunate  men  were 
burnt  alive. 

The  soldiers'  diaries  are  rilled  with  descriptions  of  in- 
cendiarism, some  of  which  we  now  quote.  "Returned  by 
Mazerulles,  which  was  burnt  as  we  passed  through,  because 
the  engineers  found  a  telephone  there  connected  up  with 
the  French."  "The  whole  village  was  in  a  blaze.  Every- 
thing destroyed  in  the  street,  except  one  small  house;  in 
front  of  the  door  was  a  poor  woman  with  her  six  children, 
her  arms  raised  and  begging  for  mercy.  And  every  day  it 
is  the  same  thing." 

Parux.  "The  first  village  burnt  (in  Lorraine,  on  Au- 
gust ioth)  ;  after  that  the  fun  began.  Villages  in  flames, 
one  after  the  other."  Another  notebook  simply  states, 
"Sommepy — horrible  carnage.  The  village  entirely  burnt; 
the  French  thrown  into  the  burning  houses;  civilians  with 
the  rest."  Another  recalls  theatrical  memories.  "The  vil- 
lage is  ablaze;  it  reminds  one  of  the  conflagration  of  Wal- 
halla  in  the  Twilight  of  the  Gods.'  " 

Here  is  a  poet  speaking:  "The  soldiers  set  up  the  red 
cock  {i.e.,  fire)  upon  the  houses,  just  as  they  like."  This 
poet  is  moved,  and  speaks  of  "pure  vandalism"  on  the  part 
of  his  companions  in  arms.  And  again,  a  musician  writes, 
"Throwing  of  incendiary  grenades  into  the  houses;  a  mili- 
tary concert  in  the  evening — 'Nun  danket  alle  Gotf !  (Now 
thank  we  all  our  God)."  Finally,  a  Bavarian  :  "The  village 
(Saint-Maurice,  Meurthe-et-Moselle)  was  surrounded,  and 
the  soldiers  posted  one  yard  apart  so  that  no  one  could 
escape.  Then  the  Uhlans  set  fire  to  the  place,  one  house 
after  the  other.  No  man,  woman,  or  child  could  possibly 
escape.  Only  the  cattle  were  removed  in  safety,  because 
cattle  have  some  value.  Any  one  trying  to  escape  was  shot. 
Everything  in  the  village  was  destroyed."  We  shall  see 
presently  that  they  even  went  so  far  as  to  burn  ambulances. 

Murder 

Not  having  sufficient  space  for  a  complete  catalogue,  we 
shall  here  simply  mention  the  judicial  murders  of  Miss  Ca- 
vell,  Eugene  Jacquet,  Battisti,  and  others,  in  order  to  honor 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE     27 

the  memory  of  those  noble  victims.  For  the  same  reason,  as 
they  are  now  well  known  to  every  one,  we  content  ourselves 
with  merely  recalling  the  criminal  torpedoing  of  the  Lusi- 
tania,  Ancona,  Portugal,  Amiral-Ganteaume  ...  all  mer- 
chant steamers,  without  any  military  character  whatever, 
employed  in  carrying  passengers  of  every  nationality,  and 
the  last  named  crowded  with  refugees. 

We  may  pass  over  the  crimes  committed  from  a  distance, 
so  to  speak,  on  unfortified  towns,  with  field-pieces,  long- 
range  guns,  aeroplanes,  and  Zeppelins,  merely  noting  that 
the  Germans  were  the  first  to  fire  shells  into  the  center  of 
towns  indiscriminately.  If  they  made  an  exception,  it  was 
to  aim  at  the  cathedral  square,  when  people  were  leaving 
after  Mass,  as  at  Nancy,  or  into  the  market-place  at  the  time 
when  women  are  busiest,  as  they  did  at  Luneville. 

We  only  mention  here  such  outrages  as  were  committed 
at  close  quarters  with  hand-weapons,  bayonets  or  rifles.  The 
list  is  a  long  one.  Will  the  exact  number  of  victims  ever 
be  known  ?  In  Belgium  alone  it  has  been  proved  that  up  to 
now  more  than  5,000  civilians  have  been  assassinated: 
grown  men,  old  people,  women  and  children.  They  slaugh- 
tered their  victims  sometimes  one  by  one,  sometimes  in 
groups,  often  in  masses.  They  were  not  content  only  with 
killing.  At  one  place  they  organized  round  the  massacre 
such  tragic  scenes,  and  at  another  displayed  such  refinements 
of  cruelty  that  reason  falters  in  face  of  their  acts,  and  asks 
what  terrible  madness  has  brought  this  race  to  such  low 
depths  ?  Is  it  possible  ?  Yes,  it  is.  Judge  by  the  following 
examples : 

A  Westphalian  prisoner  states,  "The  commanding  offi- 
cer ordered  us  to  shoot  two  women,  and  we  did  so.  One  of 
them  was  holding  a  child  by  the  hand,  and  in  falling  she 
dragged  the  child  over  with  her.  The  officer  gave  orders 
to  shoot  the  child,  because  it  could  not  be  left  alone  in  the 
world."  At  Rouves,  a  Government  clerk  refused  to  tell  a 
Bavarian  officer  the  numbers  of  the  French  regiments  in  the 
neighborhood.  The  officer  killed  him  with  two  shots  from 
his  revolver.  At  Crezancy,  another  officer  shot  with  his  own 
hand  young  Lesaint,  18  years  old,  "to  prevent  his  being  a 


28     THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

soldier  later  on."  At  Embermenil,  Madame  Masson  was 
shot  for  having,  in  absolute  good  faith,  given  some  wrong 
information.  As  she  was  obviously  in  a  state  of  pregnancy, 
they  made  her  sit  down  on  a  bench  to  meet  her  fate.  At 
Ethe,  two  priests  were  shot  "for  having  buried  some 
weapons."  At  Marqueglise,  a  superior  officer  ordered  the 
arrest  of  four  young  fugitives.  Learning  that  two  of  them 
came  from  Belgium,  he  exclaimed,  "The  Belgians  are  filthy 
people,"  and  without  more  ado  took  his  revolver  and  shot 
them  one  after  the  other.  Three  were  killed  outright,  the 
fourth  expired  the  following  day. 

At  Pin,  some  Uhlans  found  two  young  boys  on  the  road. 
They  tied  them  by  the  arms  to  their  horses  and  galloped  off. 
The  bodies  of  the  poor  lads  were  found  a  few  miles  away — 
their  knees  were  "literally  crushed";  one  had  his  throat  cut 
and  both  had  several  bullets  in  their  heads. 

At  Herimenil,  during  the  pillage,  the  inhabitants  were 
shut  up  in  a  church,  and  kept  there  for  four  days  without 
food.  When  Madame  Winger,  23  years  of  age,  and  her 
three  young  servants,  one  girl  and  two  boys,  were  too  slow 
in  leaving  her  farm  to  go  to  the  church,  the  captain  ordered 
his  men  to  fire  on  them.     Four  more  dead  bodies ! 

The  Germans  arrived  at  Monchy-Humieres.  A  group 
of  inhabitants  watched  them  marching  past.  No  provoca- 
tion whatever  was  offered,  but  an  officer  th5ught  that  he 
heard  some  one  utter  the  word  "Prussians."  He  at  once 
called  out  three  dragoons,  and  ordered  them  to  fire  upon 
the  group — one  killed  and  two  wounded — one  of  the  latter 
being  a  little  girl  of  four. 

At  Sommeilles,  when  the  fire — which  destroyed  the 
whole  place — broke  out,  Madame  X.  took  refuge  in  a  cellar 
belonging  to  M.  and  Madame  Adnot,  who  were  there,  with 
their  four  children,  the  eldest  a  girl  of  1 1  years.  A  few  days 
after,  on  returning  to  the  village,  our  soldiers  found  the 
seven  bodies  in  the  cellar  lying  in  a  pool  of  blood,  several 
of  them  being  horribly  mutilated.  Madame  X.  had  her 
right  arm  severed  from  her  body;  the  little  girl's  foot  had 
been  cut  off,  and  the  little  boy  of  five  had  his  throat  cut. 
At  Louveigne  a  certain  number  of  men  were  shut  up  in 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE     29 

a  blacksmith's  shop;  in  the  afternoon  the  murderers  opened 
the  door  as  if  it  were  a  pigeon-shooting  competition,  drove 
the  prisoners  out,  and  shot  them  down — a  ghastly  group  of 
17  corpses. 

At  Senlis  the  heroic  Mayor,  M.  Odent,  and  six  members 
of  his  staff  were  shot. 

At  Gerbeviller  they  forced  their  way  into  the  house  of 
M.  and  Madame  Lingenheld;  seized  the  son,  aged  36,  ex- 
empt from  service,  and  wearing  the  badge  of  the  Red  Cross, 
tied  his  hands,  dragged  him  into  the  street  and  shot  him. 
They  then  returned  to  look  for  the  father,  an  old  man  of 
70.  Meanwhile  the  mother,  mad  with  terror,  made  her 
escape.  On  coming  out  she  saw  her  son  lying  on  the  ground. 
As  he  still  showed  signs  of  life,  they  threw  paraffin  over 
him  and  roasted  him.  The  father  was  shot  later  on  with 
fourteen  other  old  men.  More  than  150  victims  were  identi- 
fied in  this  parish. 

At  Nomeny,  M.  Vasse  provided  shelter  for  a  number  of 
neighbors  in  his  cellar.  Fifty  soldiers  got  in  and  set  fire 
to  the  house.  To  escape  the  flames  the  refugees  rushed  out 
and  were  shot  one  by  one  as  they  emerged.  Mentre  was 
killed  first;  his  son  Leon,  with  his  little  eight-year-old  sister 
in  his  arms,  fell  next :  as  he  was  not  quite  dead  they  put  the 
barrel  of  a  rifle  to  his  ear  and  blew  his  brains  out.  Then 
came  the  turn  of  a  family  named  Kieffer.  The  mother  was 
wounded;  the  father,  his  boy  and  girl,  aged  respectively  10 
and  3,  were  shot  down.  They  fell  on  them  with  fury. 
Striffler,  Guillaume,  and  Vasse  were  afterwards  massacred. 
Young  Mile.  Simonin,  17  years  old,  and  her  small  sister, 
afraid  to  leave  their  refuge  in  the  cellar,  were  eventually 
driven  out  by  the  flames,  and  immediately  shot  at.  The 
younger  child  had  an  elbow  almost  blown  off  by  a  bullet; 
as  the  elder  girl  lay  wounded  on  the  ground,  she  was  de- 
liberately kicked  by  a  soldier.  At  Nomeny  40  victims  were 
identified. 

The  following  depositions  on  the  massacres  at  Nomeny 
are  made  by  prisoners,  one  a  Bavarian  officer  in  the  Reserve, 
the  other  a  private  in  the  same  regiment.  The  lieutenant 
says :     "I  gathered  the  impression  that  it  was  impossible 


30     THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

for  the  officers  at  Nomeny  to  prevent  such  acts.  As  far  as  I 
can  judge,  the  crimes  committed  there,  which  horrified  all 
the  soldiers  who  were  at  Nomeny  later  on,  must  be  put  down 
to  the  acts  of  unnatural  brutes."  The  soldier  says,  "At  five 
o'clock  regimental  orders  were  received  to  kill  every  male 
inhabitant  of  Nomeny,  and  to  raze  everything  to  the  ground ; 
we  forced  our  way  into  the  houses."  Here  is  a  more  de- 
tailed account  of  a  massacre  near  Blamont :  "All  the  vil- 
lagers fled :  it  was  terrible ;  their  beards  thick  with  blood,  and 
what  faces!  They  were  dreadful  to  look  at.  The  dead 
were  all  buried,  numbering  sixty.  Among  them  were  many 
old  men  and  women,  and  one  unfortunate  woman  half  con- 
fined— the  whole  being  frightful  to  look  at.  Three  children 
were  clasped  in  each  other's  arms,  and  had  died  thus.  The 
Altar  and  the  vaulting  of  the  church  were  destroyed  be- 
cause there  was  a  telephone  2  communicating  with  the  en- 
emy. This  morning,  September  2nd,  all  the  survivors  were 
expelled.  I  saw  four  small  boys  carrying  away  on  two 
sticks  a  cradle  containing  a  baby  of  five  or  six  months.  All 
this  is  dreadful  to  see.  Blow  for  blow :  thunder  against 
thunder!  Everything  is  given  up  to  pillage.  I  also  saw 
a  mother  with  her  two  children ;  one  had  a  big  wound  on  the 
head,  and  one  eye  knocked  out." 

Outrages  on  Women  and  Children 

We  might  write  a  long  and  heartbreaking  chapter  on 
this  pitiful  subject,  but  let  the  following  suffice.  The  Report 
of  the  French  Commission  of  Inquiry  concludes  with  these 
words,  "Outrages  upon  women  and  young  girls  have  been 
common  to  an  unheard-of  extent."  No  doubt  the  bulk  of 
these  crimes  will  never  come  to  light,  for  it  needs  a  con- 
catenation of  special  circumstances  for  such  acts  to  be  com- 
mitted in  public.  Unfortunately  and  only  too  often  these 
circumstances  have  existed,  e.g.,  at  Beton-Bazoches  and 
Sancy-les-Provins,  a  young  girl,  and  at  St.  Denis-les-Re- 

'  To  whom  did  it  belong,  and  where  was  it?  Telephones  exist  in 
every  district  of  Meurthe-et-Moselle.  Besides,  our  army  installed  field 
telephones  which  were  not  all  destroyed  at  the  time  of  their  retreat. 
It  is  a  most  foolish  pretext. 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE      31 

baix,  a  mother-in-law  and  a  little  boy  of  eight  years  old, 
and  at  Coulommiers  a  husband  and  two  children,  were  wit- 
nesses to  outrages  committed  on  the  mother  of  the  family. 
Sometimes  the  attacks  were  individual  and  sometimes  com- 
mitted by  bodies  of  men,  e.g.,  at  Melen-Labouxhe,  Margaret 
W.  was  violated  by  twenty  German  soldiers,  and  then  shot 
by  the  side  of  her  father  and  mother.  They  did  not  even 
respect  nuns.3 

They  did  not  even  spare  grandmothers  (Louppy-le- 
Chateau,  Vitry-en-Perthois,  etc.). 

Nor  did  they  respect  children.  At  Cirey,  a  witness  (a 
University  professor),  whose  statements  one  of  us  took 
down  a  few  days  after  the  tragedy,  cried  to  a  Bavarian 
officer,  "Have  you  no  children  in  Germany?"  All  the  officer 
said  in  reply  was,  "My  mother  never  bore  swine  like  you." 

Now  and  then  they  let  themselves  loose  on  a  whole  fam- 
ily; at  Louppy,  the  mother  and  her  two  young  girls,  aged 
thirteen  and  eight,  respectively,  were  simultaneous  victims 
of  their  savagery. 

The  outrages  sometimes  lasted  till  death.  At  Nimy, 
the  martyrdom  of  little  Irma  G.  lasted  six  hours,  till  death 
delivered  her  from  her  sufferings.  When  her  father  tried 
to  rescue  her  he  was  shot,  and  her  mother  was  seriously 
wounded.  Indeed,  it  was  certain  destruction  to  any  fren- 
zied parent  who  tried  to  defend  his  child.  A  clergyman  of 
Dixmude  says,  "The  burgomaster  of  Handzaeme  was  shot 
for  trying  to  protect  his  daughter."  And  how  many  other 
cases  have  occurred !  We  have  not  the  heart  to  continue  the 
list. 

Martyrdom  of  Civilian  Prisoners 

After  having  burnt  our  villages,  and  shot  the  inhabi- 
tants by  dozens  in  some  places,  and  by  hundreds  in  others, 
they  frequently  deported  all  or  a  part  of  the  survivors  to 
Germany.  It  is  impossible  at  this  moment  to  establish  the 
number  of  those  deported,  but  they  were  sent  off  by  tens 

8  See  the  report  of  the  French  Commission.  See  also  the  moving 
letter  of  Cardinal  Mercier  to  von  Bissing :  "My  conscience  forbids  my 
divulging  to  any  tribunal  the  information,  alas,  only  too  well  substan- 
tiated, which  I  possess.     Outrages  on  nuns  have  been  committed." 


32     THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

of  thousands.  These  unfortunate  people,  men,  women  and 
children,  who  had  witnessed  and  survived  fires  and  mas- 
sacres, who  had  seen  their  houses  blazing  and  so  many  of 
those  dear  to  them  fall  under  the  bullets  of  the  assassin, 
and  who  were  forced  in  some  places  to  dig  graves  for  their 
victims,  and  in  others  to  hold  a  light  for  the  executioners 
while  they  were  finishing  off  the  wounded, — these  poor 
wretches  are  dispatched  to  Germany.  What  a  journey,  and 
what  a  place  of  residence! 

Before  February  28,  191 5,  more  than  10,000  persons, 
old  men,  women,  and  children,  who  had  been  deported  from 
France  to  Germany,  had  been  repatriated  by  way  of  Switzer- 
land. All  those  who  received  them  on  their  return  were 
"alarmed  at  their  ragged  condition  and  weakness,"  which 
was  so  great  that  the  French  Commission  of  Inquiry  re- 
ceived special  instructions  to  question  these  victims.  They 
took  the  evidence  of  over  300  witnesses  in  28  different  lo- 
calities. To  do  justice  to  their  case  one  ought  to  quote  the 
whole  report — children  brutally  torn  away  from  their 
mothers,  poor  wretches  crowded  for  days  together  in  car- 
riages so  tightly  packed  that  they  had  to  stand  up,  cases  of 
madness  occurring  among  these  half-stifled  crowds,  howl- 
ing with  hunger.  But  we  must  confine  our  quotations  to  a 
few  items  of  "Kultur."  "While  the  men  of  Combres  set 
out  for  Germany,  the  women  and  children  were  shut  up  in 
the  village  church.  They  were  kept  there  for  a  month,  and 
passed  their  nights  seated  in  the  pews.  Dysentery  and  croup 
raged  among  them.  The  women  were  allowed  to  carry  ex- 
crement only  just  outside  the  church  into  the  churchyard." 
"At  least  four  of  the  prisoners  were  massacred  because 
they  could  not  keep  up  with  the  column,  being  completely 
exhausted."  "Fortin,  aged  65,  and  infirm,  could  not  go 
any  further.  They  tied  a  rope  to  him,  and  two  horsemen 
held  the  ends  so  that  he  had  to  keep  the  pace  of  the  horses. 
As  he  kept  falling  down  at  every  moment,  they  made  him 
get  up  by  poking  him  with  their  lances.  The  poor  wretch, 
covered  with  blood,  prayed  them  to  kill  him." 

"One  hundred  and  eighty-nine  inhabitants  of  Sinceny, 
who  were  sent  to  Erfurt,  arrived  there  after  a  journey  of 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE      33 

84  hours,  during  which  each  of  them  got  nothing  but  a  sin- 
gle morsel  of  bread  weighing  less  than  four  ounces.  An- 
other convoy  spent  four  days  on  the  railway  journey  and 
were  only  fed  once,  and  were  beaten  with  sticks  and  fists  and 
with  knife  handles."  The  same  brutalities  were  experi- 
enced in  the  German  cities  through  which  they  passed,  and 
very  few  of  the  civilian  prisoners  escaped  being  buffeted  by 
the  infuriated  crowds  or  being  spat  upon. 

So  much  for  the  journey.  Now  for  what  happened  to 
them  after  their  arrival!  "The  declarations  made  to  us 
show  clearly  that  the  bulk  of  the  prisoners  almost  col- 
lapsed from  hunger.  After  food  had  been  distributed, 
when  anything  was  left,  you  saw  some  of  them  rush  to  the 
neighborhood  of  the  kitchens;  hustled  and  beaten  by  the 
sentries,  these  unfortunates  risked  blows  and  abuse  to  try 
and  pick  up  some  additional  morsels  of  the  sickening  food. 
You  saw  men,  dying  of  hunger,  picking  up  herring  heads, 
and  the  grounds  of  the  morning's  decoction." 

At  Parchim,  where  2,000  French  civilians  from  12  to 
yy  years  of  age  were  interned,  two  starving  prisoners  who 
asked  for  the  scraps  left  over  were  beaten  with  the  butt- 
ends  of  rifles  to  such  an  extent  that  they  died  of  their 
wounds.  The  young  son  of  one  of  them  who  tried  to  pro- 
tect his  father  was  tied  to  a  stake  for  a  week  on  end. 

On  oath,  Dr.  Page  deposes :  "Those  who  had  no  money 
almost  died  of  hunger.  When  a  little  soup  was  left,  a 
crowd  of  unfortunates  rushed  to  get  it,  and  the  non-commis- 
sioned officers  got  rid  of  them  at  last  by  letting  the  dogs 
loose  on  them."  But  what  is  the  need  of  all  these  details 
and  of  all  this  evidence  ?  Look  at  the  10,000  who  came  back 
after  being  repatriated  and  see  what  the  bandits  have  done 
to  them.  Reader,  summon  up  your  courage  and  peruse  to 
the  bitter  end  the  conclusions  of  the  Official  Commission  of 
Inquiry.  "It  is  impossible  to  conceal  the  melancholy  and 
indignation  we  felt  on  seeing  the  state  of  the  'hostages'  4 
whom  the  Germans  had  returned  to  us  after  they  had  kid- 
naped them  in  defiance  of  the  rights  of  nations.     During 

*  Through  old  habit,  the  Commission  makes  use  of  this  word;  they 
are  not  "hostages,"  of  course. 

W.,  VOL.  III.— 3. 


34     THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

our  inquiry  we  never  ceased  hearing  the  perpetual  coughs 
that  rent  them.  We  saw  numbers  of  young  people  whose 
cheerfulness  had  disappeared  apparently  forever,  and  whose 
pale  and  emaciated  faces  betrayed  physical  damage  probably 
beyond  repair.  In  spite  of  ourselves  we  could  not  help 
thinking  that  scientific  Germany  had  applied  her  methodical 
ways  to  try  and  spread  tuberculosis  in  our  country.  Nor 
were  we  less  profoundly  moved  to  thought  by  the  sight  of 
women  mourning  their  desolated  hearths  and  missing  or  cap- 
tive children,  or  by  the  moral  impression  left  on  the  faces 
and  bearing  of  many  prisoners  by  the  hateful  regime  which 
was  intended  to  destroy,  in  those  who  were  subjected  to  it, 
the  feeling  of  human  dignity  and  self-respect." 

German  Excuses:  Lies  and  Calumny 

The  Bodies  have  taken  up  three  positions  in  succession. 
In  the  first  place,  in  their  speeches,  in  their  writings  and 
by  commemorative  pictures  and  medals,  they  have  gloried 
in  their  misdeeds,  thus  declaring  that  Kultur  is  above  mo- 
rality (as  stated  by  their  writer,  Thomas  Mann),  that  the 
right  of  German  might  is  above  everything.  Then,  in  the 
second  place,  when  they  discovered  that  in  the  world  outside 
them  there  was  something  known  as  a  "moral  conscience," 
not  understood  by  them,  but  still  to  be  reckoned  with,  they 
cynically  denied  the  charg-es.  Finally,  when  they  were  driven 
from  this  second  trench,  when  simple  negation  became  im- 
possible, they  had  perforce  to  explain  their  crimes. 

Their  commonest  explanation  is  this,  "Civilians  fired  on 
us."  5  The  French  Commission  of  Inquiry  came  to  the 
following  conclusion  on  this  point :  "This  allegation  is 
false,  and  those  who  put  it  forward  have  been  powerless 
to  give  it  the  appearance  of  truth,  even  though  it  has  been 
their  custom  to  fire  shots  in  the  neighborhood  of  dwellings, 
in  order  to  be  able  to  affirm  that  they  have  been  attacked 

8  Need  it  be  noted  here  that  even  if  in  any  locality  an  imprudent 
civilian  had  fired  a  shot,  it  would  still  remain — in  accordance  with  the 
Hague  Convention,  International  Law,  and  plain  morality — a  crime  to 
massacre  in  a  heap,  haphazard,  and  without  inquiry,  so  many  innocent 
souls? 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE     35 

by  innocent  inhabitants,  on  whose  ruin  or  massacre  they  had 
resolved." 

Inquiries  conducted  by  high  magistrates  have  estab- 
lished the  fact  that  German  officials  are  very  frequently 
guilty  of  premeditated  lies.  It  is  probable,  all  the  same,  that 
many  German  soldiers,  on  entering  Belgium  or  France,  were 
obsessed  by  the  idea  of  civilians  firing  on  them.  The  cry 
of  a  soldier  trembling  with  fear,  drunk,  or  thirsting  for  pil- 
lage— "Man  hat  geschosscn  (they  have  fired)" — is  enough 
for  a  locality  to  be  delivered  up  at  once  to'  the  wildest  fury. 
"When  an  inhabitant  has  fired  on  a  regiment,"  said  a  soldier 
at  Louvain,  "the  place  belongs  to  the  regiment."  What  a 
temptation  for  a  Boche  soldier  to  fire  a  shot  that  will  at 
once  unloose  pillage  and  massacre ! 

Some  mistakes  have  possibly  been  made  which  could 
have  been  avoided  by  the  least  inquiry.  Read  this  admission 
recorded  in  his  diary  by  a  Saxon  officer:  "The  lovely  vil- 
lage of  Gue-d'Hossus  has  been  given  over  to  the  flames, 
though  innocent  in  my  opinion.  I  hear  that  a  cyclist  fell 
off  his  machine  and  that  his  fall  caused  his  rifle  to  go  off  of 
itself.  As  a  consequence  there  was  firing  in  his  direction. 
Then,  the  male  inhabitants  were  simply  hurled  straight 
away  into  the  flames.  Such  horrors  will  not  be  repeated, 
we  must  hope  .  .  .  There  ought  to  be  some  compulsion  to 
verify  suspicions  of  guilt  in  order  to  put  a  check  on  this 
indiscriminate  shooting  of  people." 

The  only  shots  fired  at  them  inside,  or  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of,  villages  have  been  those  of  French  or  Belgian  sol- 
diers covering  their  retreat.  Sometimes  this  has  been  dis- 
covered, but  too  late,  and  they  have  continued  their  crimes 
— in  order  to  justify  them. 

Here  is  the  statement  of  a  neutral :  "In  one  village 
they  found  corpses  of  German  soldiers  with  the  fingers  cut 
off,  and  instantly  the  officer  in  command  had  the  houses  set 
on  fire  and  the  inhabitants  shot  ...  In  the  same  district  a 
German  officer  was  billeted  with  a  famous  Flemish  poet; 
the  officer  behaved  courteously,  was  treated  with  considera- 
tion, and  allowed  himself  to  talk  freely :  his  complaint  was 
the  misdeeds  of  his  soldiers.    Near  Haelen,  he  told  his  host, 


36     THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE 

he  had  to  have  a  soldier  shot  on  finding  in  his  knapsack 
some  fingers  covered  with  rings :  the  man,  on  being  ques- 
tioned, admitted  that  he  had  cut  them  off  the  bodies  of 
the  German  dead." 

In  exceptional  cases  an  inquiry  is  held ;  and  in  every  such 
instance  the  truth  is  discovered  and  massacre  prevented. 

At  the  end  of  August,  Liebknecht,  a  member  of  the 
Reichstag,  set  out  in  his  car  for  Louvain.  He  came  to  a  vil- 
lage where  there  was  considerable  excitement  going  on. 
The  Germans  had  just  found  three  of  their  men  lying  dead 
on  the  road,  and  accused  the  peasants  of  being  responsible 
for  the  deed.  Liebknecht  examined  them,  and  was  not  long 
in  obtaining  proof  that  the  Germans  had  been  killed  by 
Belgian  riflemen.  At  Huy  there  were  shots  in  the  night ;  two 
soldiers  wounded ;  the  populace  accused ;  the  mayor  arrested 
and  condemned  to  death ;  but  he  knew  that  there  were  no 
Allied  troops  in  the  neighborhood,  and  also  that  his  own 
people  had  not  fired  a  shot.  "Shoot  me,  if  you  like,"  he  said 
calmly,  "but  not  before  extracting  the  bullets  from  the 
wounded."  The  officer,  less  of  a  brute  than  some,  gave  his 
consent  to  this.  The  bullets  in  the  wounds  were  German 
bullets. 

In  their  private  diaries  they  accuse  one  another,  each 
throwing  on  his  neighbor  the  responsibility  for  crimes  com- 
mitted. A  cavalryman  writes :  "It  is  unfortunately  true 
that  the  worst  elements  of  our  Army  feel  themselves  au- 
thorized to  commit  any  sort  of  infamy.  This  charge  ap- 
plies particularly  to  the  A.S.C."  A  bombing  officer:  "Dis- 
cipline becoming  lax.  Brandy.  Looting.  The  blame  lies 
with  the  infantry."  An  infantry  officer :  "Discipline  in 
our  company  excellent — a  contrast  with  the  rest.  The  Pio- 
neers are  not  worth  much.  As  for  the  Artillery,  they  are  a 
band  of  brigands."  A  final  extract  seems  to  be  the  only  one 
that  gives  the  truth :  "Troops  of  all  arms  are  engaged  in 
looting." 

What  is  our  object  in  repeating  these  reports  of  horror? 

Is  it  to  incite  our  soldiers  to  commit,  if  chance  arises, 
atrocities  like  theirs?  We  repudiate  with  horror  a  thought 
such  as  that.    Defensive  reprisals  (asphyxiating  gas,  liquid 


THE  "PRUSSIAN  TERROR"  IN  FRANCE      37 

fire,  etc.)  are  sometimes  indispensable.  Reprisals  for  re- 
venge would  be  unworthy  of  us.  But — without  speaking 
of  personal  punishments,  demanded  by  outraged  conscience, 
and  essential  in  order  that  the  two  indivisible  principles  of 
right  and  of  responsibility  may  still  exist  in  the  world — we 
must  make  it  absolutely  impossible  for  the  Wild  Beast  to 
break  out  again. 

It  is  not  enough  for  these  crimes  to  be  known  by  Gov- 
ernments and  by  a  few  hundred  people  with  leisure  and 
inclination  to  read  collections  of  great  volumes.  They 
must  be  known  by  everybody,  by  the  entire  people,  by  the 
People,  who — in  our  proud  and  free  countries — control, 
support,  direct  their  Governments  and  are  .the  sole  masters 
of  their  own  destiny. 

Our  peoples  ought  to  know  the  crimes  committed  in 
the  name  of  "Kultur,"  in  order,  at  all  costs,  to  take  the 
precautions  necessary  to  prevent  forever  their  return.  That 
is  our  first  object.  The  second  is  this :  to  all  our  martyrs 
we  have  a  sacred  duty — that  of  remembrance.  There,  where 
they  fell,  we  shall  doubtless  carve  their  names  in  stone  or 
bronze.  But  what  of  a  time  further  away?  When,  after 
the  long  sufferings  of  this  war,  freed  humanity  takes  up 
again  its  works  of  peace,  we  shall  see  the  Germans  reap- 
pear in  every  land,  at  every  crossroad — men  of  commerce, 
industry,  finance,  science,  men  of  the  people  and  of  society 
— in  every  place  where  those  of  all  countries,  all  races  and 
all  colors  meet  and  rub  elbows.  And  what  is  our  attitude 
to  be  ?  Our  answer  is  this :  So  long  as  the  nation  in  whose 
name  and  by  whose  hands  these  atrocities  have  been  com- 
mitted has  not  herself  solemnly  cast  from  her  the  scoundrels 
who  dragged  her  into  such  decadence,  we  shall  consider 
that  it  would  betray  our  martyrs  for  us  even  to  rub  shoul- 
ders with  their  executioners,  and  that  until  the  day  arrives 
— if  it  ever  does  arrive — of  a  striking  moral  repentance,  to 
forget  would  be  to  condone. 


TURKEY  LOSES  THE  CAUCASUS 

THE  RUSSIAN  VICTORY  OF  SARIKAMISH 

JANUARY   4TH 

ROBERT  MACHRAY 

No  Turkish  accounts  of  the  Great  War  have  been  issued,  except 
a  few  wholly  empty  and  boastful  proclamations.  No  reliable  account 
ever  can  be  issued  now,  because  of  the  general  Turkish  downfall.  The 
Russian  anarchy  has  been  almost  equally  destructive  both  of  eye-wit- 
nesses and  official  records  of  the  great  events  of  the  early  years  of  the 
War.  Hence  we  are  obliged  to  appeal  to  a  western  historian,  a  British 
expert  on  the  "Near  East"  for  a  clear  narrative  of  the  spectacular  mid- 
winter campaign  which  Turks  and  Russians  fought  against  each  other 
amid  the  mighty  mountains  of  the  Caucasus. 

The  Caucasus  mountain  region  divides  Europe  and  Asia  to  the 
eastward  of  the  Black  Sea.  Its  summits  are  among  the  highest  peaks 
in  the  world,  including  Mt.  Ararat  of  Biblical  fame,  which  is  over 
21,000  feet  high.  Here  occurred  much  of  the  hard  fighting  of  the  pre- 
ceding Russo-Turkish  war  of  1878,  which  made  famous  the  Caucasus 
fortresses  of  Kars  and  Erivan.  And  here  in  December  of  1914,  not  far 
from  Kars,  the  chief  Russian  stronghold,  there  gradually  developed  a 
bitter  battle,  which  reached  its  climax  of  Russian  victory  at  Sari- 
kamish  on  January  4,  1915.  Hence  the  new  year  was  ushered  in  by 
an  Ally  triumph. 

Northern  Armenia  was  soon  afterward  occupied  by  the  Russians, 
and  also  northern  Persia,  with  its  capital  Tabriz.  The  Turks  had 
previously  seized  northern  Persia ;  and  as  they  retreated  the  advancing 
Russians  snatched  it  in  their  turn.  The  Persians  were  helpless  be- 
tween the  two.  The  Russians  had  previously  "policed"  this  part  of 
Persia ;  now  they  gradually  spread  over  it  as  conquerors.  The  Turks 
fell  back  unwillingly  to  their  own  domains  along  the  Euphrates  River 
valley.    Here  they  were  later  to  fight  Britons  as  well  as  Russians. 

BY  ROBERT  MACHRAY 

OF  unusual  interest,  both  from  the  military  and  the  po- 
litical points  of  view,  and  not  less  remarkable  in  its 
broadly  human  aspects  was  the  campaign  in  the  Caucasus. 
It  was  no  small  affair,  no  mere  episode;  involving,  as  it 
did,  the  fate  of  above  a  quarter  of  a  million  men,  and  rang- 
ing over  a  front  of  some  three  hundred  miles,  it  would  have 
been   rightly   deemed   something   tremendous   in   any    war 

38 


TURKEY  LOSES  THE  CAUCASUS  39 

other  than  the  present  colossal  conflict  of  the  nations.  Yet 
the  large  scale  on  which  it  was  conducted  in  such  a  region 
and  at  the  particular  season  of  the  year,  the  extraordinary 
boldness  and  at  least  partial  success  of  the  Turkish  plan  of 
attack,  and  the  overwhelming  triumph  of  the  Russians  that 
was  its  final  result,  came  as  a  great  surprise  to  the  world, 
whose  attention  had  been  absorbed  by  the  vast  issues  in  the 
western  and  in  the  main  eastern  theaters  of  operations.  The 
general  public  had  been  hardly  aware  that  fighting  of  an 
important  character  was  proceeding  in  the  Caucasus;  in 
our  newspapers,  as  a  rule,  the  communiques  dealing  with  it, 
issued  by  the  Russian  Headquarters  Staff,  which  were  al- 
most the  only  sources  of  information  available,  had  been 
consistently  stowed  away  in  a  corner  as  if  they  did  not 
count.  Then  suddenly  this  indifference  was  changed  by 
the  publication  of  a  memorable  telegram  on  January  4th 
from  the  Grand  Duke  Nicholas,  that  most  laconic  of  men, 
addressed  to  General  Joffre,  another  strong,  silent  man, 
which  began  with  the  significant  words,  "I  hasten  to  give 
you  good  news,"  and  definitely  announced  two  crushing  de- 
feats of  the  Turks  that  were  sheer,  irremediable  disaster, 
as  later  was  seen  to  be  the  case. 

Up  to  that  time  even  the  Russians  themselves  in  other 
parts  of  their  empire  took  comparatively  slight  notice  of 
the  struggle  in  the  Caucasus,  as  in  their  view  it  was  a  very 
secondary  business  when  compared  with  the  gigantic  and 
terrible  contest  being  waged  in  Poland  and  Galicia.  Nor 
at  first  did  they  appreciate  the  greatness  of  the  achieve- 
ment of  their  arms  in  that  area  at  anything  like  its  full  value 
— they  spoke  of  it  as  a  "pleasant  little  success  this  Christ- 
mas," that  is,  at  their  Christmas,  which  is  twelve  days  after 
ours.  Further,  the  fact  is  that  while  sharp  fighting  with 
the  Turks  was  not  unexpected,  it  did  not  follow  the  line  an- 
ticipated by  the  Russian  Command,  who  looked  and  pre- 
pared for  it  much  more  to  the  southeast. 

Although  Turkey  was  suspected  by  the  Allies  almost 
from  the  commencement  of  the  Great  War  in  August,  she 
did  not  commit  the  provocative  acts,  including  the  bombard- 
ment of  Odessa,  until  the  end  of  October.    During  the  in- 


40  TURKEY  LOSES  THE  CAUCASUS 

tervening  period  of  three  months,  and  particularly  towards 
the  latter  part  of  it,  Austro-German  pressure  on  the  Rus- 
sian front  in  Europe  necessitated  a  withdrawal  of  some 
portion  of  the  Russian  troops  normally  stationed  on  the 
Turkish  frontier  and  in  Caucasia,  and  known  as  the  "Army 
of  the  Caucasus."  This  force,  which  was  under  the  imme- 
diate control  of  the  Governor-General  of  the  Caucasus,  was 
intended  to  be,  and  generally  was,  kept  independent  of  the 
Russian  main  armies  and  separate  from  them,  and  in  ordi- 
nary times  was  credited  with  180,000  effectives,  comprised 
in  three  army  corps,  various  brigades  of  rifles,  several  di- 
visions of  cavalry,  and  numerous  bands  of  Cossacks.  The 
southern  boundary  of  Caucasia  marches  with  both  Turkish 
and  Persian  territory,  and  the  activities  of  this  army  were 
not  confined  entirely  to  the  viceroyalty,  for  it  also  sup- 
plied the  body  of  soldiers  that  Russia  maintained  in  the 
northern  part  of  Persia,  which  under  the  Anglo-Russian 
Agreement  of  1907  is  recognized  as  the  "Russian  Sphere." 
Last  year,  before  the  war,  the  number  of  these  soldiers  was 
estimated  at  3,000,  distributed  in  detachments  throughout 
northern  Persia,  notably  at  Teheran,  its  capital,  and  in  the 
province  of  Azerbaijan  at  Tabriz,  its  second  city.  De- 
tailed, at  all  events  nominally,  for  the  preservation  of  order 
and  the  protection  of  Russian  interests  in  that  long-dis- 
tracted country,  and  too  inconsiderable  to  be  designated  an 
army  of  occupation,  they  yet  constituted  in  a  very  real  sense 
the  advance-guard  of  the  Russian  Empire  in  that  quarter 
of  the  globe. 

When  the  Russians  saw  that  war  with  the  Turks  was  in- 
evitable, their  first  preoccupation  in  that  region  was  their 
frontier,  which  was  so  vulnerable,  so  little  defended  by  for- 
tifications of  any  sort,  that  it  was  called  the  Achilles'  heel 
of  Russia.  Attack  was  easy  on  that  side,  and  thinking  it 
was  there  that  the  Turks  would  operate  in  force,  they  re- 
duced their  strength,  already  decreased  by  drafts  to  Eu- 
rope, in  the  mountain  districts  of  the  Caucasus,  and  con- 
centrated the  troops  thus  obtained  north  and  south  of  the 
Arasces,  which  forms  the  international  boundary,  the  cen- 
tral point  being  Julfa,  the  terminus  of  a  railway  from  Tiflis, 


TURKEY  LOSES  THE  CAUCASUS  41 

and  some  eighty  miles  distant  from  Tabriz  by  the  best  road 
in  Persia. 

The  Turks,  however,  either  foresaw  what  the  Russians 
would  do,  or  were  informed  by  their  spies  of  what  was 
taking  place,  and  when  they  developed  their  great  offensive 
it  was  found  that  while  their  attack  did  include  this  south- 
eastern part  of  Caucasia,  their  main  assault  was  made  else- 
where, namely,  in  the  mountains  of  the  Caucasus  on  their 
own  and  the  Russian  frontier.  Their  objective  was  not 
Tabriz-Julfa-Tiflis,  or  Khoi-Julfa-Tiflis  (Khoi  lies  west  of 
Tabriz  and  is  rather  nearer  Julfa),  but  Sarikamish-Kars- 
Tiflis.  They  deliberately  selected  the  much  harder  route  be- 
cause, it  must  be  held,  they  deemed  the  many  difficulties 
which  it  presented  as  more  than  counterbalanced  by  the 
relatively  inferior  strength  of  the  Russians  who  were  de- 
fending it,  and  by  the  decided  military  advantage  that  comes 
from  a  surprise.  The  plan  of  the  Turkish  Command,  who 
no  doubt  were  acting  under  German  inspiration,  has  been 
characterized  as  mad,  but  it  is  only  right  to  say  that  it  was 
madness  with  reason  in  it;  the  best  justification  of  it  is  that 
it  met  with  a  large  measure  of  success,  and  indeed  very 
nearly  succeeded  altogether. 

It  was  at  the  end  of  November  that  the  Turks  began  to 
put  their  plan  of  campaign  into  execution,  and  winter  had 
already  set  in,  not  only  in  the  mountains,  but  throughout  the 
Armenian  plateau.  The  Russians  were  held  up  but  still 
fighting  hard  at  Koprokoi,  and  had  made  no  further  advance 
of  moment  on  the  rest  of  their  front,  north  or  south.  There 
was  no  longer  talk  in  Petrograd  of  the  imminent  fall  of 
Erzerum ;  instead,  the  military  critic  of  the  Retch  admitted 
that  the  Turks  were  making  a  spirited  struggle  in  spite  of 
their  enormous  losses,  and  that  they  were  well-trained,  well- 
equipped,  disciplined,  and  enduring.  The  phrase  "enormous 
losses"  has  been  used  so  often  in  this  war,  and  with  so 
elastic  a  signification,  that  apart  from  figures  being  given, 
it  has  come  to  have  little  meaning;  but  whether  their  losses 
were  enormous  or  not,  the  Turks  were  now  in  great  strength, 
in  far  greater  strength  than  the  Russians. 

Under  Hassan  Izzet  Pasha,  its   Commander-in-Chief, 


42  TURKEY  LOSES  THE  CAUCASUS 

the  Ottoman  "Third  Army,"  which  included  some  of  Tur- 
key's best  troops,  had  been  concentrated  at  Erzerum;  it 
consisted  of  three  army  corps,  each  of  three  divisions:  the 
9th  Army  Corps,  whose  headquarters  was  Erzerum  itself; 
the  10th  Army  Corps,  from  Erzingan;  and  the  nth  Army 
Corps,  from  Van.  With  auxiliaries  this  army  numbered 
about  120,000  men.  On  its  right,  deployed  southeast  of 
Erzerum,  were  forces,  perhaps  drawn  from  Van  or  even 
Mosul;  and  still  farther  on  its  right  were  two  or  three 
Turkish  regiments  and  masses  of  Kurdish  irregulars.  This 
right  wing,  which  extended  into  Persia,  was  nowhere  strong, 
and  was  not  prominent  in  the  unfolding  of  the  Turkish  of- 
fensive, but  it  kept  more  or  less  busily  employed  considerable 
Russian  forces  whose  presence  was  much  needed  in  the 
center — they  had  the  satisfaction,  however,  of  inflicting  on 
it  a  defeat  on  December  26th  at  Dutak  that  prevented  it 
from  cooperating  in  the  main  attack,  as  may  have  been  tfie 
design. 

Of  far  greater  consequence  was  the  Turkish  left  wing, 
which  was  made  up  of  two  divisions  of  the  1st  Army  Corps, 
brought  at  the  outset  of  the  war  from  Constantinople  and 
landed  at  Kopa  and  other  ports  on  the  Black  Sea  south  of 
Batum,  and  supplemented  by  many  irregulars  in  the  district 
of  the  Chorok  (northeast  of  Erzerum),  where  its  concentra- 
tion was  effected.  It  had  been  the  original  intention  of  the 
Turks  that  this  army  should  strike  at  Batum  when  it  was  in 
sufficient  force  by  additions  from  oversea,  but  as  the  result 
of  Russian  resistance  on  land,  and  especially  of  various  ac- 
tions between  the  Turkish  and  Russian  Fleets,  which  ended 
in  the  latter  gaining  the  control  of  the  Black  Sea,  the  idea 
was  rendered  impracticable  and  was  abandoned.  Mean- 
while, the  plan  for  the  big  offensive  in  the  Caucasus  had 
been  evolved,  and  the  1st  Army  Corps  and  its  supports  were 
fitted  into  it  as  the  left  wing.  This  wing  may  have  had 
from  30,000  to  35,000  combatants;  the  precise  figure  is  un- 
certain, but  it  must  have  been  fairly  large.  Hassan  Izzet 
Pasha,  or  Enver  Pasha,  if  it  was  he  who  really  was  in  chief 
command,  had  in  all  probability  upwards  of  160,000  men 
at  his  disposition,  and  the  operations  he  set  on  foot  soon 


TURKEY  LOSES  THE  CAUCASUS  43 

disclosed  the  familiar  German  turning  movement  which 
aims  at  the  envelopment  and  destruction  or  surrender  of  an 
enemy  army  in  some  particular  locality — in  this  case,  the 
Russians  on  the  line  Sarikamish-Kars. 

Naturally  the  Russians,  like  any  other  people  in  the 
same  circumstances,  do'  not  make  a  point  in  their  com- 
muniques of  announcing  their  retirements  and  reverses,  and 
definite  Turkish  information  is  lacking;  but  while  some  of 
the  details  of  this  remarkable  movement  are  obscure,  its 
principal  outlines  are  sufficiently  clear. 

I.  In  the  Center;  the  main  attack.  During  the  last  days 
of  November  and  the  first  of  December  the  ioth  Army 
Corps  moved  out  from  Erzerum  in  a  northeasterly  direction 
by  roads  or  tracks  which  must  have  been  passable,  two  di- 
visions marching  on  Ardost  in  the  Sivri  valley,  and  one 
division  on  Id  in  the  adjoining  valley  of  the  Olti,  a  southern 
tributary  of  the  Chorok.  The  Russians  had  occupied  these 
frontier  posts,  which  are  in  Turkish  territory,  early  in  No- 
vember; the  Turks  now  drove  them  out,  and  advancing  on 
the  Russian  side  of  the  mountains,  took  Olti,  a  little  town, 
out  the  most  important  in  the  neighborhood,  and  the  starting 
place  of  several  tracks  leading  southward  to  Sarikamish,  to 
the  railway  two  or  three  miles  east  of  it,  and  even  to  Kars. 
Pushing  the  Russians  before  it,  but  slowly,  for  they  fought 
with  characteristic  "stubbornness,"  giving  way  only  under 
the  pressure  of  greatly  superior  numbers,  the  ioth  Army 
Corps  marched  on  to  Sarikamish,  with  the  intention,  of 
course,  of  taking  the  Russians  there  in  flank  and  rear,  and 
capturing  the  railway  to  Kars.  It  reached  its  objective  in 
the  fourth  week  of  December.  At  the  same  time  the  Rus- 
sians were  assailed  in  front  by  the  9th  Army  Corps,  which 
now  appeared  upon  the  scene.  In  conjunction  with  the 
nth  Army  Corps,  the  9th  Corps,  by  the  third  week  in  De- 
cember, had  compelled  the  Russians,  after  severe  fighting, 
but  here  also  far  outnumbered,  to  withdraw  from  Koprokoi 
and  other  positions  east  of  it  on  the  main  road  to  Sari- 
kamish, and  had  forced  them  back  into  the  mountains.  Be- 
sides the  main  road  there  are  in  the  vicinity  two  paths  from 
the   foothills   that  cross   over  to   Sarikamish   on   different 


44  TURKEY  LOSES  THE  CAUCASUS 

passes,  and  on  one  of  these  tracks  at  Korosan,  a  few  miles 
from  the  highway,  the  nth  Corps  halted,  attacked  and  "con- 
tained" the  Russians  immediately  in  front  of  them,  while 
the  9th  Corps  fought  its  way  over  the  pass  on  the  main  road, 
and  got  into  touch  with  the  10th  Corps.  These  two  corps 
then  assaulted  the  Russian  forces,  and  after  several  days' 
sanguinary  onslaughts,  but  with  numbers  still  decidedly  in 
their  favor,  took  Sarikamish  and  two  or  three  miles  of  the 
railway  beyond  it,  as  the  year  drew  to  an  end. 

II.  The  Right  Wing ;  largely  negligible,  as  noted  above. 

III.  The  Left  Wing;  most  important  outflanking 
movement,  and  scarcely  subsidiary  to  that  of  I.,  but  co- 
ordinated with  it.  In  addition  to  the  highway  from  Erze- 
rum  to  Sarikamish  there  is  but  one  other  good  road,  and 
that  is  to  speak  relatively,  in  the  Little  Caucasus.  It  climbs 
up  from  Batum  through  the  valley  of  the  Chorok  to  Artvin, 
thence  to  Ardanuch  on  the  south  side  of  the  river,  and  next 
to  Ardahan,  from  which  it  goes  down  direct  to  Kars.  The 
1st  Corps,  operating  in  the  Chorok  region,  and  materially 
assisted  by  the  rebellious  Adjars  of  the  country,  seized  this 
road,  occupied  Ardanuch,  and  after  a  desperate  Russian 
resistance  lasting  seventeen  days,  which  must  have  been  one 
of  the  most  heroic  in  history,  took  Ardahan,  and  threatened 
an  immediate  descent  on  Kars,  which  if  it  succeeded  would 
cut  off  the  retreat  of  the  Russians  west  of  it,  that  is,  at 
Sarikamish,  from  Kars. 

To  sum  up.  On  January  1st  the  Turks  were  in  pos- 
session of  Sarikamish  and  part  of  the  railway,  though  they 
had  destroyed  a  bit  of  it,  and  on  January  2nd  they  also 
held  Ardahan.  It  looked  for  all  the  world  as  if  the  Turkish 
plan  were  working  out  into  a  great  victory.  Reading  be- 
tween the  lines  of  the  messages  wired  by  the  correspondents 
of  our  journals,  it  could  be  discerned  that  Petrograd  was 
anxious  and  uneasy;  the  correspondent  of  the  Times  said 
that  "it  must  be  recognized  that  the  Turks  under  German 
leadership  have  displayed  exceptional  qualities  of  general- 
ship." The  Turks  themselves  appeared  to  be  in  no  doubt 
of  the  issue;  it  is  stated  that  Enver  Pasha  was  so  confident 
of  the  result  that  he  said  that  he  expected  to  be  in  Tiflis 


TURKEY  LOSES  THE  CAUCASUS  45 

within  a  few  days.  It  was  perhaps  of  this  particular  time 
that  the  writer  of  the  German  official  communique  was 
speaking  when  he  reported  that  in  Berlin  military  circles 
the  situation  of  the  Turkish  Army  in  the  Caucasus  was  con- 
sidered to  be  exceedingly  favorable. 

But  the  Russian  Viceroy  and  his  military  advisers  had 
grasped  the  situation,  too.  The  Turks  had  been  made  to 
pay  very  dearly  for  every  foot  of  their  advance.  Even 
so  they  remained  far  more  numerous  than  the  Russians,  who 
therefore  needed  to  be  strongly  reenforced.  Persia  was 
denuded  of  Russian  soldiers,  and  large  bodies  of  troops  were 
hurried  forward  to  the  front  by  rail  from  Kars,  Erivan, 
and  Jul  fa — almost,  but  not  quite,  too  late.  They  would 
have  been  altogether  too  late  if  the  ist  Army  Corps  had  been 
able  to  make  its  contemplated  descent  on  Kars,  and  the  first 
concern  of  the  Viceroy  had  been  to  send  supports  to  the 
gallant  regiment  which  alone  had  so  long  withstood  the 
attack  of  the  two  divisions  of  this  Corps  before  and  at 
Ardahan.  Yet  larger  reinforcements  were  dispatched  to 
Sarikamish,  and  they  arrived  to  find  that  though  the  place 
had  been  reft  from  Russian  hands  the  battle  was  being 
waged  with  no  less  determined  persistence  and  tenacity  by 
their  compatriots.  Neither  at  Ardahan  nor  at  Sarikamish 
were  the  Russians,  even  in  the  closing  stages,  nearly  so 
numerous  as  the  Turks. 

It  was,  however,  written,  as  the  Turks  themselves  would 
say,  that  their  plan,  even  on  the  edge  of  seeming  fulfillment, 
was  doomed  to  failure  of  the  most  disastrous  kind ;  but  the 
writing  was,  all  said  and  done,  the  writing  of  that  first-class 
fighting  man,  the  Russian  infantryman,  who,  like  another 
famous  first-class  fighting  man,  does  not  know  when  he  is 
beaten.  Beaten  he  was  at  Ardahan  and  at  Sarikamish,  but 
at  both  he,  as  it  were,  held  out  and  would  not  acknowledge 
defeat.  From  neither  was  he  forced  in  rout  and  disorder; 
from  Ardahan  he  fell  back  slightly,  and  from  Sarikamish 
about  three  miles.  When  the  reinforcements  came  up  the 
Russians,  thanks  to  the  valor  of  these  hard-pressed  but  un- 
daunted infantry  of  theirs,  were  at  once  in  a  position  to 
undertake  a  vigorous  offensive,  which  developed  into  glori- 


46  TURKEY  LOSES  THE  CAUCASUS 

ous  victories,  gained  practically  simultaneously.  In  point  of 
time  they  succeeded  first  at  Ardahan,  Sunday,  January  3rd. 
It  had  been  understood  that  they  consummated  their  over- 
whelming triumph  at  Sarikamish  on  the  same  day,  but  an 
official  survey  of  the  operations,  published  in  Petrograd  on 
February  1st  by  the  Headquarters  Staff  of  the  Army  of  the 
Caucasus,  definitely  fixes  the  date  as  Monday,  January  4th; 
the  only  difference  is  that  the  Turkish  left  wing  was  smashed 
a  day  earlier  than  the  center.  Details  of  the  course  of  the 
struggle  are  lacking,  but  the  immediate  cause  of  the  tre- 
mendous change  in  the  fortunes  of  the  belligerents  was  the 
artillery  which  the  Russian  reinforcements  were  able  to 
bring  on  the  scene  in  both  areas — a  comparatively  easy  mat- 
ter with  respect  to  the  Sarikamish  front,  to  which  the  rail- 
way gave  access,  but  an  extremely  arduous  business  at  Arda- 
han, forty  miles  up  the  mountains  by  road  from  Kars. 

Hardly  any  information  regarding  the  battle  of  Ardahan 
can  be  obtained  beyond  statements  that  after  the  place  was 
bombarded  the  Russians  drove  the  1st  Army  Corps  out  of 
it  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet,  and  by  repeated  charges  ut- 
terly routed  the  enemy,  who  was  crushed  into  fragments. 
These  broken  remnants  fled  in  confusion  back  to  Ardanuch, 
but,  hotly  pursued,  were  not  allowed  to  rest  there  long,  as  it 
was  reoccupied  by  the  victors  on  January  18th.  Some  sur- 
vivors from  the  wreck  made  good  their  escape  into  their 
own  territory,  while  others  sought  refuge  in  the  fastnesses 
of  the  Chorok  ranges,  where  the  Ad  jars  gave  them  shelter, 
but  as  a  combatant  force  the  Turkish  left  wing  had  been 
swept  out  of  existence.  The  fighting  in  and  about  Sari- 
kamish lasted  in  all  nearly  a  fortnight,  but  the  various  and 
varying  accounts  of  its  later  phases  convey  a  somewhat 
blurred  impression  rather  than  provide  a  consecutive  narra- 
tive. That  impression  is  mainly  of  great  masses  of  Turks, 
brave  to  the  last  but  famished  and  half-frozen,  being  mown 
down  by  guns  and  maxims  and  rifle-fire  on  the  main  road, 
in  the  passes,  and  on  the  lower  slopes  of  the  mountains ;  or 
of  their  fierce  attacks  repulsed  and  Russian  counter-attacks 
driven  home,  the  cold  steel  finishing  what  was  left  undone 
by  shell  and  bullet — the  whole  against  a  background  of 


TURKEY  LOSES  THE  CAUCASUS  47 

snow,  in  an  atmosphere  so  arctic  that  the  wounded  suc- 
cumbed to  the  cold  where  they  fell.  Doubtless  it  was  all 
desperate  and  sanguinary  enough.  By  the  end,  the  9th 
Corps,  with  the  exception  of  its  general,  Iskhan  Pasha,  its 
divisional  commanders,  and  a  few  hundred  officers  and  men 
who  capitulated,  was  totally  destroyed,  while  the  10th  Corps 
was  decisively  defeated  and  put  to  flight,  what  remained  of 
it  making  its  way  back  to  Olti  as  best  it  could,  and  losing 
more  men  and  material  ever  as  it  went.  Thus,  of  the 
Turkish  center  one-third  was  absolutely  demolished,  and 
another  third  battered  to  pieces  and  dispersed;  with  the  left 
wing  gone  this  meant  that  the  plan  of  campaign,  well-con- 
ceived as  it  was,  and  carried  out  with  success  for  about  a 
month,  had  after  all  finally  crashed  down  in  blackest  ruin. 
News  of  this  disaster  reached  Enver  Pasha,  who  was 
probably  at  Erzerum  or  Koprokoi  at  this  time,  and  with  a 
view  to  attempting  to  retrieve  the  situation,  or  at  least  of 
covering  the  retreat  of  the  10th  Corps,  he  hastened  to  Koro- 
san,  where  the  1  ith  Corps,  the  remaining  third  of  the  center, 
was  still  in  position,  holding,  or  perhaps  being  held  by,  the 
Russians  in  front  of  it.  Putting  himself  at  the  head  of  the 
nth  Corps,  whose  commander  he  is  said  to  have  had  exe- 
cuted— why  is  not  clear — Enver  moved  it  up  to  Kara  Urgan, 
a  post  on  the  main  road  to  Sarikamish  just  on  the  frontier, 
and  was  joined  by  fresh  troops  in  such  numbers  that,  ac- 
cording to  one  account,  which,  however,  must  be  grossly 
exaggerated,  his  force  was  100,000  strong.  Kara  Urgan 
is  about  a  dozen  miles  west  of  Sarikamish,  and  the  Russians 
advancing  from  the  latter  on  the  former  engaged  this  army, 
whose  offensive  was  so  resolute  that  for  four  days  they 
made  no  headway  against  it.  On  January  nth  the  tide 
turned,  but  it  was  not  till  January  16th,  when  a  strongly 
fortified  Turkish  position  at  Zivin,  a  few  miles  west  of 
Kara  Urgan,  was  stormed,  that  victory  was  assured  and  the 
Turks  were  thoroughly  routed.  "Despite  violent  snow- 
storms, which  lasted  from  the  8th  to  the  16th  of  January, 
rendering  the  roads  very  difficult,  our  troops  by  dint  of  the 
greatest  heroism  and  extraordinary  tenacity  progressed  con- 
tinuously with  attack  after  attack,"  says  the  Russian  com- 


48  TURKEY  LOSES  THE  CAUCASUS 

munique  of  February  ist;  "the  enemy's  forces  were  com- 
pletely broken  up  and  retreated  precipitately,  abandoning 
wounded  and  ammunition  and  flinging  their  guns  down 
precipices."  In  other  words,  Kara  Urgan  repeated  the 
same  story  as  Ardahan  and  Sarikamish.  For  five  days  the 
Russians  kept  indefatigably  pursuing  the  Turks,  dislodging 
them  from  point  after  point,  until  they  fled,  demoralized 
and  shattered,  back  towards  Erzerum.  This  completed  the 
debacle,  and  with  the  exception  of  desultory  and  insignifi- 
cant encounters  in  the  Olti  region  with  the  remains  of  the 
ioth  Corps,  concluded  the  campaign  in  the  Caucasus.  On 
the  stricken  fields  of  the  Caucasus  the  Turks  are  reported  to 
have  suffered  a  loss  of  more  than  a  hundred  guns,  and  their 
loss  in  killed  and  prisoners  cannot  have  been  much,  if  at 
all,  short  of  70,000  men. 


THE  U-BOAT   WAR  ON   COMMERCE 

GERMANY'S  DEFIANCE  OF  THE    NEUTRAL   NATIONS 

FEBRUARY   4.TH 

PRINCE   VON    BULOW  ADMIRAL   VON    TIRPITZ 

WILLIAM  ARCHER 

On  February  4,  1915,  Germany  took  a  step  which  challenged  all  the 
world  to  war.  She  declared  that  her  U-boats  would  sink  at  sight  any 
merchant  ship  which  they  even  suspected  of  being  an  enemy.  This 
obviously  meant  in  threat,  and  actually  caused  in  practice,  the  torpe- 
doing of  many  neutral  vessels.  Now,  the  right  of  neutral  sailors,  and 
even  of  neutral  merchandise,  to  safety  at  sea  had  been  guaranteed  to 
them  for  generations  by  every  civilized  nation,  including  Germany. 
Hence  this  declaration  was  a  breaking,  not  of  some  special  treaty  as  in 
the  case  of  the  invasion  of  Belgium,  but  of  all  treaties.  It  struck  at 
the  very  basis  of  all  International  Law,  and  claimed  for  Germany  the 
right  to  be  sole  arbiter  of  all  her  acts,  including  even  the  killing  of 
f  <reigners  who  had  committed  no  crime  and  with  whom  she  had 
no  war. 

Such  slaying  of  even  a  single  citizen  abroad  has  long  been  held  as 
an  absolutely  necessary  cause  of  war,  if  the  injured  nation  meant  to 
claim  any  sort  of  equal  rank  among  others.  Several  years  ago  when 
a  mob  in  one  of  America's  southern  cities  slew  some  Italians,  the  U.  S. 
Government  felt  called  upon  not  only  to  deny  all  participation  in  the 
matter  but  to  express  its  utmost  disapproval  and  its  desire  to  have  the 
offenders  adequately  punished.  Yet  here  was  a  government  actually 
commanding  its  subjects  to  slay  law-abiding  foreigners.  Had  other 
nations  been  of  as  arrogant  a  temper  as  the  Germans,  this  challenge 
must  have  meant  universal  war. 

The  neutrals,  however,  with  the  United  States  at  their  head,  were 
determined  to  make  every  possible  allowance  for  the  exigencies  of  the 
Great  War.  They  attempted  only  by  words  of  protest  to  prevent  the 
threatened  killing  of  their  people;  and  with  words  Germany  was  very 
ready  to  meet  them.  With  each  government  she  undertook  elaborate 
and  long-delayed  discussions,  while  to  the  mass  of  shipping  men  she 
let  the  actions  of  her  U-boats  speak  for  her. 

Of  course  the  real  issue  for  her  was,  could  she  block  the  bulk  of 
neutral  trade  from  Britain  by  terrorizing  neutral  sailors?  She  did  not 
want  to  draw  any  further  foes  into  the  War  if  it  could  be  evaded ;  but 
she  meant  to  put  fear  into  the  hearts  of  all  men  at  sea,  as  she  had  al- 
ready sought  to  do  by  "frightfulness"  on  land.  As  regards  France 
and  Britain,  the  new  form  of  submarine  warfare  was  but  a  continuation 
of    Germany's    already   announced    attitude   of   the    "superman."      She 

W.,  VOL.  III.— 4.  4.0 


50         THE  U-BOAT  WAR  ON  COMMERCE 

meant  to  break  every  pledge  of  the  past,  every  restraint  of  morality  or 
Christianity,  if  she  thereby  increased  her  chance  of  victory. 

The  British  losses  through  this  submarine  attack  were  heavy.  Dur- 
ing the  four  years  from  1915  onward,  5,622  British  merchant  ships  were 
sunk,  amounting  to  about  half  of  all  she  possessed.  Among  neutrals, 
Norway,  the  victim  to  suffer  most,  lost  about  one  eighth  as  much  as 
Britain.  The  United  States  lost  19  merchant  vessels  during  her  two 
years  of  neutrality,  and  126  during  her  two  years  of  war.  More  than 
15,000  British  civilian  sailors  were  killed,  and  775  Americans  on  Ameri- 
can ships.  These  figures  are  exclusive  of  Americans  slain  on  British 
ships  as  in  the  Lusitania  case,  that  subject  being  reserved  for  another 
article. 

Britain's  standpoint  in  the  matter  is  here  presented  by  one  of  her 
ablest  writers,  Mr.  William  Archer.  The  German  standpoint  is  voiced 
by  her  former  Chancellor,  Prince  von  Biilow  and  by  Admiral  von 
Tirpitz,  the  man  who  organized  and  directed  the  U-boat  assaults. 

C.  F.  H. 
BY  PRINCE  VON   BULOW 

THE  history  of  England,  who  has  always  dealt  most 
harshly  with  her  vanquished  foe  in  the  few  European 
wars  in  which  she  has  taken  part  in  modern  times,  gives  us 
Germans  an  idea  of  the  fate  in  store  for  us  if  defeated. 
Once  embarked  upon  a  war,  England  has  always  ruthlessly 
devoted  all  means  at  her  disposal  to  its  prosecution.  Eng- 
lish policy  was  always  guided  by  what  Gambetta  called  "la 
souverainete  da  but."  England  can  only  be  got  at  by 
employing  like  decision  and  determination.  The  English 
character  being  what  it  is,  since  in  the  course  of  the  world's 
history  we  are  now  for  the  first  time  at  war  with  England, 
our  future  depends  upon  our  employing  all  our  means  and 
all  our  forces  with  equal  ruthlessness,  so  as  to  secure  the 
victory  and  obtain  a  clear  road.  Since  the  German  people, 
with  unparalleled  heroism,  but  also  at  the  cost  of  fearful 
sacrifices,  has  waged  war  against  half  the  world,  it  is  our 
right  and  our  duty  to  obtain  safety  and  independence  for 
ourselves  at  sea.  We  must  also  win  really  sufficient  and, 
above  all,  practical,  guarantees  for  the  freedom  of  the  seas 
and  for  the  further  fulfillment  of  our  economic  and  political 
tasks  throughout  the  world.  The  result  of  the  great  strug- 
gle in  this  particular  respect  will  be  decisive  for  the  total 
result  of  the  war  and  also  for  the  judgment  that  will  be 
passed  upon  it. 


THE  U-BOAT  WAR  ON  COMMERCE         51 

BY  ADMIRAL  VON  TIRPITZ  * 

The  historical  decision  to  make  a  war  zone  around  the 
United  Kingdom  and  Ireland  was  arrived  at  on  the  evening 
of  February  2nd  in  a  conference  between  von  Pohl  and  the 
Chancellor  with  the  consent  of  the  Foreign  Office,  in  the 
presence  of  the  Minister  of  the  Home  Office,  and  apparently 
without  opposition  from  the  Grand  General  Staff. 

Von  Pohl  obtained  the  consent  of  the  Chancellor,  who 
was  still  sadly  unconversant  with  the  world  conditions  and 
our  own  submarine  power  and  then  on  February  4th  sprang 
his  prepared  draft  of  the  declaration  of  the  Emperor  while 
sailing  through  Wilhelmshaven  Harbor. 

It  was  disloyal  of  von  Pohl  not  to  consult  beforehand 
with  the  Secretary  of  State  as  to  the  wording  of  the  draft. 
He  was  also  disloyal  to  me  as  he  had  always  previously 
sought  my  advice  in  reaching  critical  decisions.  I  was  en- 
titled to  this. 

His  act  was,  on  the  whole,  the  product  of  boundless 
va  lity.  He  wished  above  all  that  the  declaration  should  be 
made  over  his  name,  and  February  4th  was  the  last  date  on 
which  this  could  be  done,  for  on  that  day  he  took  over  the 
command  of  the  High  Seas  Fleet  and  was  already,  strictly 
speaking,  no  longer  chief  of  the  naval  staff. 

So,  against  my  advice  and  on  the  decision  of  Bethmann- 
Hollweg,  submarine  war  was  to  begin,  threatening  every 
ship  sailing  in  the  direction  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland. 
Unless  the  dignity,  and  therewith  the  power,  of  the  em- 
pire was  to  be  seriously  impaired  and  the  confidence  of  the 
enemy  fatally  strengthened,  there  was  nothing  for  it  now 
but  to  stand  fast. 

In  the  face  of  the  whole  world,  seriously  and  with  a 
flourish  of  trumpets,  as  it  were,  the  declaration,  in  my  opin- 
ion so  premature  and  so  unfortunate,  had  been  made. 

On  February  12th  came  America's  first  note  of  protest 
against  submarine  warfare.  In  a  responsible  bureau  this 
could  hardly  have  been  unexpected,  but  to  von  Pohl's  as- 

1  From  the  "Von  Tirpitz  Memoirs,"  copyright,  1919,  by  Dodd.  Mead 
&  Co. 


52         THE  U-BOAT  WAR  ON  COMMERCE 

tonishment  and  chagrin  it  caused  the  Foreign  Office  to  make 
an  about-face  in  regards  to  the  U-boat  policy. 

The  Chancellor's  representative  at  headquarters,  von 
Reuter,  later  said  that  the  Chancellor  had  been  misunder- 
stood by  von  Pohl.  Von  Pohl  energetically  denied  the  pos- 
sibility of  a  misunderstanding,  maintaining  that  he  had  care- 
fully explained  to  the  Chancellor  the  full  consequence  of 
the  step. 

Thus,  scarcely  had  submarine  warfare,  born  February 
4th,  drawn  its  first  breath,  when  its  own  fathers,  terrified, 
hastened  to  smother  it.  In  my  opinion  we  should  never 
even  have  considered  a  modification  of  our  submarine 
policy,  once  it  was  announced  to  the  world,  unless  England 
consented  to  modify  some  of  her  own  interpretations  of 
maritime  law  during  the  war. 

America's  first  protest  resulted  in  our  allowing  the  shell 
of  submarine  warfare  to  stand  as  a  sop  to  the  German  pub- 
lic, ever  irritating  America,  but  by  orders  from  our  political 
leaders  to  our  submarine  commanders  we  had  hollowed  out 
the  military  kernel.  We  were  acting  on  a  program  of  big 
words  and  little  deeds.  Our  method  of  submarine  warfare 
had  now  become,  according  to  Bethmann's  prediction,  inef- 
fective for  final  German  victory,  but  a  fruitful  source  of 
vexatious  incidents  with  the  United  States. 

BY  WILLIAM  ARCHER 

It  took  Germany  some  six  months  to  make  up  her  mind 
to  the  systematic  employment  of  her  U-boats  as  commerce- 
destroyers.  During  those  six  months  (August,  1914-Janu- 
ary,  191 5,  inclusive)  a  good  deal  of  harm  was  done  to  Al- 
lied shipping  by  a  few  warships  which  had  been  at  large 
at  the  outbreak  of  hostilities,  notably  by  the  Emden  in  the 
Indian  Ocean.  The  proceedings  of  these  ships  were,  if  not 
incontestably  legal,  at  least  plausibly  defensible  under  inter- 
national law.  It  is  true  that  they  constantly  sank  their 
prizes  instead  of  taking  them  into  port  to  have  their  status 
determined  by  a  Prize  Court;  but  it  is  generally  admitted 
that  the  destruction  of  a  prize  is  permissible  when  circum- 
stances render  it  dangerous  or  impracticable  to  bring  it  into 


THE  U-BOAT  WAR  ON  COMMERCE         53 

harbor;  and  as  practically  all  Germany's  oversea  harbors 
had  been  seized  very  early  in  the  war,  it  is  manifest  that 
there  was  neither  port  nor  Prize  Court  within  the  raiders' 
reach.  The  right  to  sink  captured  ships  is  limited  by  the 
imperative  condition  that  the  captor  "must  make  due  pro- 
vision for  the  safety  of  passengers  and  crew,  and  for  the 
preservation  of  the  ship's  papers";  and  this  condition  the 
raiders  honorably  observed.  Captain  Muller,  of  the  Em- 
den,  collected  the  crews  and  passengers  of  a  number  of  prizes 
on  board  a  single  vessel,  which  he  then  set  free. 

A  few  isolated  instances  of  submarine  attacks  on  mer- 
chant shipping  occurred  in  this  period,  but  only  one  was 
marked  by  gross  inhumanity. 

The  first  commercial  victim  was  the  steamship  Glitra, 
from  Grangemouth  to  Stavanger,  which  was  stopped  by  a 
U-boat  about  noon  on  October  20,  1914,  nine  miles  S.W. 
of  Skudesnaes.  A  boat's  crew  of  5  men  boarded  the  steamer, 
and  when  the  captain  lowered  the  British  flag  the  German 
officer  tore  it  up  and  trampled  upon  it.  The  "Gott  strafe 
England"  craze  was  then,  it  will  be  remembered,  at  its 
height.  The  crew  were  allowed  ten  minutes  to  take  to  their 
boats,  and  then  the  ship  was  sunk,  it  is  believed  by  opening 
the  bottom  valves.  The  Hamburger  Nachrichten  described 
this  exploit  as  "a  brisk  Viking-stroke." 

On  November  23rd  the  Malachite  was  held  up  in  Havre 
roadstead,  the  crew  were  allowed  ten  minutes  to  leave  the 
ship,  and  it  was  then  sunk  by  shell-fire.  Three  days  later 
(November  26th)  the  Primo  was  sunk  off  Cape  Antifer. 
In  neither  of  these  cases  was  the  crew  exposed  to  any  seri- 
ous danger. 

Very  different  was  the  case  of  the  Amiral  Ganteaume. 
This  passenger  ship,  bound  from  Calais  to  Havre,  with 
2,500  refugees  on  board,  was  wantonly  torpedoed,  without  a 
moment's  warning,  twelve  miles  from  Cape  Grisnez.  The 
Channel  passenger  steamer  Queen  ranged  up  alongside  of 
the  stricken  ship,  and  "with  great  resourcefulness  and  dar- 
ing" took  off  most  of  the  passengers.  About  50,  however, 
lost  their  lives.  That  the  disaster  was  not  due  to  a  mine 
was  proved  by  the  discovery  of  a  fragment  of  a  torpedo 


54         THE  U-BOAT  WAR  ON  COMMERCE 

in  the  hull  of  the  ship,  which  did  not  ultimately  sink.  This 
was  the  first  of  the  German  maritime  outrages,  and  it  was 
no  fault  of  the  perpetrators  that  it  was  not  also  the  worst. 
Had  the  torpedo  taken  full  effect,  the  death-roll  would 
have  been  longer  than  that  of  the  Lusitania.  The  attack 
was  without  a  shadow  of  excuse.  What  military  purpose 
could  be  served  by  sinking  a  passenger  ship  bound  from 
one  French  port  to  another,  and  manifestly  ( for  the  incident 
took  place  in  broad  daylight)  crowded  with  civilians?  Who- 
ever was  responsible  for  the  attack,  which  took  place  on 
October  26th,  was  clearly  animated  by  the  sheer  lust  of 
murder  which  is  awakened  in  so  many  Germans  by  the 
sight  of  defenseless  enemies.  The  sailor  who  commanded 
the  unknown  U-boat  was  a  true  brother-in-arms  of  the 
soldiers  who,  a  few  weeks  earlier,  had  marched  burning  and 
massacring  through   Belgium. 

On  January  22,  191 5,  the  steamship  Durward  was 
stopped  by  a  U-boat  about  thirteen  miles  from  the  lightship 
Maas.  The  crew  was  ordered  to  take  to  the  boats,  no  time 
being  allowed  for  the  removal  of  their  private  belongings. 
The  submarine  then  towed  the  boats  to  a  certain  distance, 
ordered  them  to  wait  there  while  it  sank  the  ship,  and  then 
towed  them  onwards  in  the  direction  of  the  lightship.  A 
week  later  (January  30th)  two  ships,  the  Ben  Cruachan 
and  the  Linda  Blanche,  were  sunk,  in  both  cases  with  rea- 
sonable consideration  for  the  safety  of  the  crews.  The  men 
of  the  Ben  Cruachan  were  given  ten  minutes  to  leave  the 
ship,  the  German  officer,  who  spoke  "perfect  English,"  bid- 
ding them  "get  as  many  of  their  belongings  together  as  they 
could."  The  ship  was  sunk  by  bombs.  In  the  case  of  the 
Linda  Blanche,  the  men  on  board  the  submarine  "handed 
cigars  and  cigarettes  to  the  crew"  as  they  took  to  their  boats. 
Deliberate  inhumanity  had  not  yet  developed  into  a  system, 
though  the  Kolnische  Zcitung,  about  the  middle  of  the 
month,  had  published  an  article  declaring  that  "in  future 
German  submarines  and  aircraft  would  wage  war  against 
British  mercantile  vessels  without  troubling  themselves  in 
any  way  about  the  fate  of  the  crews."    This  was  evidently 


THE  U-BOAT  WAR  ON  COMMERCE         55 

an  inspired  forecast,  and  it  was  to  be  promptly  and  amply 
justified  by  events. 

A  few  days  before  Christmas,  1914,  Grand  Admiral  von 
Tirpitz  granted  an  interview  to  the  representative  of  the 
United  Press  of  America,  which  very  clearly  indicated  that 
Germany  was  already  planning  a  submarine  "blockade"  of 
the  British  Islands.  "America,"  he  said,  "has  not  raised  her 
voice  in  protest,  and  has  done  little  or  nothing  against  the 
closing  of  the  North  Sea  to  neutral  shipping  by  England. 
What  would  America  say  if  Germany  should  declare  a  sub- 
marine war  against  all  enemy  trading  vessels?"  By  the 
"closing  of  the  North  Sea"  he  meant  the  measure  to  which 
Britain  had  been  driven  by  the  German  practice  of  indis- 
criminate mine-sowing  under  neutral  flags.  In  the  interests 
of  neutral  as  well  as  British  shipping,  the  Government  had 
announced  on  November  3rd,  not  that  the  North  Sea  was 
"closed,"  but  that  a  safe  passage  through  it  would  be  kept 
open  for  all  neutral  ships  entering  and  leaving  it  by  way  of 
the  Straits  of  Dover.  It  was  only  the  northern  passage  be- 
tween the  Hebrides  and  the  Faroe  Islands  that  was  closed, 
in  the  sense  that  vessels  using  it  must  do  so  at  their  peril. 

On  January  26,  191 5,  it  was  announced  that  the  Ger- 
man Federal  Council  had  decided  to  take  under  its  control 
all  the  stocks  of  corn  and  flour  in  the  country,  on  and  from 
February  1st.  It  was  at  once  anticipated  that  this  measure 
would  cause  the  British  Government  to  regard  all  cargoes  of 
foodstuffs  destined  for  Germany  as  consigned  to  the  Ger- 
man Government,  and  therefore  contraband  of  war.  The 
Germans  afterwards  tried  to  represent  their  attempted  block- 
ade as  a  measure  of  retaliation  against  this  action  of  the 
British  Government;  but,  to  say  nothing  of  the  fact  that  the 
blockade  had  been  threatened  by  von  Tirpitz  six  weeks 
earlier,  it  was  definitely  announced  before  the  British  Gov- 
ernment had  taken  any  step  whatever.  The  notification  of 
the  intended  blockade  was  issued  in  Berlin  on  February 
4th;  not  until  the  following  day  did  the  British  Foreign 
Office  announce  that  the  Government  was  considering  what 
steps  it  should  take  in  view  of  the  German  commandeering 
of  foodstuffs. 


56         THE  U-BOAT  WAR  ON  COMMERCE 

It  so  happened  that,  on  January  23rd,  a  steamship  named 
the  Wilhelmina  had  cleared  from  New  York  for  Hamburg, 
conveying  a  cargo  of  food  shipped  by  an  American  firm, 
and  consigned  to  an  American  citizen  in  Germany.  The 
Foreign  Office  note  of  February  5th  ran  as  follows:  "If 
the  destination  and  cargo  of  the  Wilhelmina  are  as  supposed, 
the  cargo  will,  if  the  vessel  is  intercepted,  be  submitted  to 
a  Prize  Court  in  order  that  the  new  situation  created  by 
the  German  decree  may  be  examined,  and  a  decision  reached 
upon  it  after  full  consideration."  This  course  was,  in  fact, 
pursued,  and  it  was  determined  that  the  action  of  the  Ger- 
man Government  in  taking  foodstuffs  under  its  exclusive 
control  justified  the  Allies  in  treating  all  provisions  con- 
signed to  Germany  as  contraband  of  war.  But  it  is  clearly 
absurd  to  represent  as  a  result  of  this  British  measure  a 
U-boat  campaign  which  had  been  formally  announced  while 
the  British  Government  was  still  considering  its  course  of 
action,  and  before  it  had  issued  any  statement  whatever  on 
the  subject. 

The  German  proclamation  ran  thus : 

"The  waters  round  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  includ- 
ing the  English  Channel,  are  hereby  proclaimed  a  war 
region. 

"On  and  after  February  18th  every  enemy  merchant 
vessel  found  in  this  region  will  be  destroyed,  without  its 
always  being  possible  to  warn  the  crews  or  passengers  of 
the  dangers  threatening. 

"Neutral  ships  will  also  incur  danger  in  the  war  region, 
where,  in  view  of  the  misuse  of  neutral  flags  ordered  by  the 
British  Government,  and  incidents  inevitable  in  sea  warfare, 
attacks  intended  for  hostile  ships  may  affect  neutral  ships 
also. 

"The  sea  passage  to  the  north  of  the  Shetland  Islands, 
and  the  eastern  region  of  the  North  Sea  in  a  zone  of  at  least 
30  miles  along  the  Netherlands  coast,  are  not  menaced  by 
any  danger. 

"(Signed)     Berlin,  February  4th, 

"Von  Pohl, 
"Chief  of  Marine  Staff." 


THE  U-BOAT  WAR  ON  COMMERCE         57 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  warfare  here  threatened  differs 
from  the  "unlimited"  warfare  of  two  years  later  in  the  po- 
sition assigned  to  neutral  shipping.  Neutrals  are  warned 
that  they  had  better  avoid  the  "war  region,"  but  it  is  in- 
dictated  that  if  they  are  attacked  it  will  only  be  by  mistake, 
and  that,  for  these  mistakes,  they  will  have  to  blame  the 
nefarious  policy  of  the  British  Government  with  regard 
to  the  use  of  neutral  flags. 

There  was  not  a  single  point  at  which  this  proclamation 
did  not  fly  in  the  face  of  international  law  as  stated  by  all 
jurists  and  as  interpreted  by  all  courts. 

The  use  of  a  neutral  flag  by  a  vessel  attempting  to  elude 
capture  has  always  been  held  legitimate.  Attacking  under 
false  colors  is  rightly  prohibited — but  that  is  a  totally  dif- 
ferent matter. 

The  warship  which  doubts  the  genuineness  of  the  flag 
displayed  by  a  merchantman  can  put  the  matter  to  the  test 
by  exercising  its  unquestioned  right  of  "visit  and  search." 
Thus  the  mistakes  with  which  neutrals  were  threatened  were 
m* stakes  which  had  no  right  to  happen.  As  for  the  avowed 
intention  of  attacking  enemy  ships  without  warning  (for 
nothing  else  was  implied  in  the  impudent  phrase  "without 
its  being  always  possible  to  warn,"  etc.),  it  stood  in  flagrant 
contravention  of  every  accepted  principle  and  of  all  civilized 
practice.  We  have  already  seen,  in  discussing  the  case  of 
the  Emden  and  other  raiders,  that  the  sinking  of  prizes  had 
hitherto  been  regarded  as  a  measure  to  be  resorted  to  only  in 
the  most  exceptional  circumstances.  Here  are  some  pro- 
nouncements of  German  authorities  on  the  point : 

Gessner  :  As  a  general  rule,  the  captor  may  not  scuttle 
or  otherwise  destroy  the  prize  he  has  taken  in  the  open  sea. 
He  may  do  so,  however,  on  his  own  responsibility,  in  cir- 
cumstances of  force  majeure. 

Heffter  :  The  destruction  of  an  enemy  prize  is  not 
justifiable  except  in  case  of  extreme  necessity. 

Bluntschli  :  As  a  rule,  enemy  prizes  must  be  taken 
into  the  captor's  port  for  adjudication.  Destruction  is  per- 
missible only  in  case  of  absolute  necessity.    The  blockade  of 


58         THE  U-BOAT  WAR  ON  COMMERCE 

the  captor's  port  does  not  in  itself  constitute  a  case  of  ab- 
solute necessity. 

Germany  now  claimed  the  right  to  make  a  universal  rule 
of  what  had  hitherto  been  sanctioned  only  as  a  rare  excep- 
tion, arguing  that  the  submarine  had  created  a  new  situa- 
tion which  had  not  been  anticipated  at  the  time  when  inter- 
national law  took  shape.  That  was,  it  is  true,  an  arguable 
point,  and  it  was  natural  that  Germany  should  decline  to  be 
bound  by  so  strict  a  reading  of  existing  regulations  as  would 
have  made  her  U-boats  entirely  powerless  as  a  weapon 
against  the  commerce  of  her  enemies.  But  she  not  only 
resolved  to  sink  every  enemy  ship  that  came  in  her  way ;  she 
made  up  her  mind  to  do  so  without  that  preliminary  visit  and 
search  which  had  hitherto  been  held  indispensable,  and 
especially  without  taking  those  measures  for  the  security  of 
non-combatant  crews  and  passengers  which  had  been  re- 
garded as  the  most  imperative  of  obligations.  Here,  she 
could  allege  no  excuse  in  the  nature  of  force  majeure.  It 
was  perfectly  possible  for  her  to  act  humanely,  as  one  or 
two  of  her  commanders  proved.  By  doing  so  she  might  to 
some  extent  have  reduced  the  effectiveness  of  her  campaign 
of  havoc;  but  she  would  have  had  her  reward  in  retaining 
some  shred  of  the  respect  of  the  civilized  world.  Her  dis- 
regard of  every  consideration  of  humanity  was  exactly  on 
a  level  with  her  frequent  use,  in  Belgium  and  Northern 
France,  of  civilian  screens  to  mask  an  infantry  advance. 
Such  practices  are  defensible  only  on  the  theory  that  Ger- 
many must  forego  no  possible  advantage,  of  however  das- 
tardly a  nature — the  theory,  indeed,  which  her  "War  Book" 
indicates  almost  without  disguise,  and  on  which  she  has  con- 
sistently acted  in  every  domain  of  warlike  activity.  But  in 
her  U-boat  campaign,  as  in  her  treatment  of  Belgium,  she 
has  exceeded  even  the  brutality  which  her  theory  demands. 
We  shall  have  to  record  many  deeds  of  a  callous  cruelty 
from  which  no  appreciable  advantage  was  to  be  reaped — 
deeds  which  betray  in  their  perpetrators  a  positive  delight 
in  murder  for  its  own  sake. 

February,  191 5,  opened  with  an  attempt  to  torpedo  the 
hospital-ship  Asturias,  which  fortunately  failed.     We  shall 


THE  U-BOAT  WAR  ON  COMMERCE         59 

have  to  speak  more  at  length  of  this  incident  when  the  time 
comes  to  chronicle  the  deliberate  and  systematic  war  upon 
hospital-ships.  For  the  present  it  remained  an  isolated  and 
motiveless  crime,  which  may  be  bracketed  with  the  attack 
on  the  Amiral  Ganteaume,  as  showing  the  reckless  ferocity 
which  was  beginning  to  prevail  among  the  U-boat  com- 
manders. 

The  "blockade,"  as  we  have  seen,  was  proclaimed  on 
February  4th,  but  a  fortnight's  grace  was  allowed  to  neu- 
trals to  clear  out  of  the  "war  region,"  and  leave  the  British 
to  their  fate.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  nothing  of  great  im- 
portance occurred  during  this  fortnight. 

On  February  19th,  the  day  after  the  expiry  of  the 
period  of  grace,  the  Norwegian  oil-steamer  Belridge  was 
torpedoed  off  Beachy  Head,  but  managed  to  reach  port. 
On  the  following  day  there  were  two  victims :  the  Cambank 
was  torpedoed  without  warning,  while  the  crew  of  the 
Downshire  were  allowed  five  minutes  to  take  to  their  boats. 
On  the  23rd  the  Oakly,  and  on  the  24th  the  Deptford,  were 
torpedoed  without  warning.  The  24th,  too,  witnessed  the 
sinking  of  the  Harpalion.  The  entire  absence  of  warning 
is  apparent  from  the  account  of  the  attack  given  by  the  sec- 
ond officer,  Mr.  Harper:  "We  had  just  sat  down  to  tea, 
and  the  chief  engineer  was  saying  grace.  He  had  just  ut- 
tered the  words,  'For  what  we  are  about  to  receive  may  the 
Lord  make  us  truly  thankful,'  when  there  came  an  awful 
crash.  I  never  saw  such  a  smash  as  it  caused."  There  is  a 
certain  grim  humor  in  the  situation,  which,  however,  the 
sailors  do  not  appear  to  have  appreciated. 

Mr.  Asquith  stated  in  the  House  of  Commons  on  March 
1st  that  the  lawless  submarine  war  was  about  to  be  met  by 
a  tightening  of  the  strangle-hold  upon  Germany;  and  an 
Order-in-Council  of  March  nth  made  the  definite  an- 
nouncement in  the  following  terms :  "His  Majesty  has  de- 
cided to  adopt  further  measures  in  order  to  prevent  com- 
modities of  any  kind  from  reaching  or  leaving  Germany, 
though  such  measures  will  be  enforced  without  risk  to  neu- 
tral ships  or  to  neutral  or  noncombatant  life,  and  in  strict 
observance  of  the  dictates  of  humanity." 


60         THE  U-BOAT  WAR  ON  COMMERCE 

Two  days  earlier  (March  9th)  three  ships,  the  Tan- 
(jlstan,  Blackwood,  and  Princess  Victoria,  had  been  tor- 
pedoed off  Scarborough,  Hastings,  and  Liverpool  respec- 
tively. In  no  case  was  any  warning  given,  and  of  the  crew 
of  the  Tangistan — 38  in  number — only  one  was  saved. 

On  March  1  ith  (the  date  of  the  Order-in-Council)  Com- 
mander Otto  Weddigen  makes  his  last  appearance  on  the 
scene.  From  the  small  U  9  with  which  he  sank  the  three 
cruisers,  he  had  been  transferred  to  a  much  more  powerful 
craft,  the  U  29.  On  this  day,  off  the  Casquet  rocks,  he 
sank  the  steamer  Aden-wen,  but  gave  the  crew  ten  minutes  to 
take  to  their  boats,  observing,  "We  wish  no  lives  to  be  lost." 
He  also  provided  a  dry  suit  for  a  sailor  who  had  fallen  into 
the  water,  thus  acting  up  to  the  nickname  which  he  had 
earned  of  "the  polite  pirate."  He  had,  unfortunately,  only 
a  few  days  more  of  life  before'him.  On  March  26th  the  Ad- 
miralty announced  that  U  29  had  been  sunk.  "There  seems 
to  be  no  doubt,"  said  The  Times,  "that  Captain  Weddigen's 
career  has  now  come  to  an  end,  with  that  of  his  new  boat. 
Our  satisfaction  at  the  occurrence  is  mingled  with  some  re- 
gret at  the  death  of  a  man  who,  so  far  as  is  known,  behaved 
bravely  and  skillfully,  and  where  it  was  possible  displayed  to 
his  victims  the  humanity  expected  of  seamen,  but  which  has 
not  been  characteristic  of  all  his  brother  officers." 

This  is  almost  the  last  good  word  that  has  to  be,  or  can 
be,  said  for  German  conduct  at  sea.  It  istrue  that  on  March 
13th,  a  few  days  before  Weddigen  lost  his  life,  some  human- 
ity had  been  shown  in  the  sinking  of  the  coMier.Hartdale.  The 
boats  got  off,  but  the  captain,  chief  officer,  steward,  and  a 
boy  remained  on  board  until  the  ship  was  awash.  The  boy 
was  unfortunately  drowned,  but  the  three  men  were  taken 
on  board  the  submarine  and  were  well  treated.  Ultimately, 
they  were  transferred  to  the  Swedish  steamship  Heimdal, 
which  had  taken  the  boats  in  tow.  It  is  also  related  that  in 
the  course  of  the  summer,  when  attacks  upon  fishing  boats 
were  the  order  of  the  day,  and  when  many  fishermen  were 
brutally  done  to  death  without  being  given  a  chance  for  their 
lives,  a  welcome  exception  to  the  general  practice  occurred 
when  the  commander  of  one  submarine  allowed  the  crew  of 


THE  U-BOAT  WAR  ON  COMMERCE         61 

a  trawler  he  attacked  to  get  away  in  their  boat.  "We  are 
not  Prussians,"  he  declared  to  the  skipper;  "it  is  only  the 
Prussians  who  would  let  you  drown."  At  sea  as  on  land, 
unfortunately,  the  Prussians  were  enormously  in  the  ma- 
jority. 

The  Atlanta  was  sunk  on  March  14th,  and  the  Fingal  on 
the  15th.  In  the  latter  case  there  was  a  death-roll  of  six, 
including  the  chief  mate  and  the  stewardess,  who  is  said  to 
have  been  the  first  woman  victim  of  the  submarine  war.  On 
March  25th  the  Dutch  steamship  Medea  was  deliberately 
sunk  by  gunfire  off  Beachy  Head.  The  crew,  however,  were 
all  saved.  Two  days  later  the  Aguila  was  sunk  by  the  same 
method.  The  crew  were  nominally  given  four  minutes  to 
leave  the  ship,  but  the  submarine  opened  fire  while  the  boats 
were  being  launched,  killing  the  chief  engineer,  the  boat- 
swain, and  a  donkey-man,  and  wounding  the  third  engineer 
and  several  seamen.  A  member  of  the  crew  said  that  one 
boat  contained  ten  men,  the  stewardess,  and  one  woman 
passenger.  As  it  was  being  launched  the  passenger  cried 
o  it,  "I'm  shot!"  and  fell  over  the  edge  of  the  gunwale  next 
to  tne  ship's  side.  The  next  moment  heavy  seas  capsized  the 
boat,  and  neither  passenger  nor  stewardess  was  ever  seen 
again.  The  Germans,  however,  were  not  entirely  callous,  for 
they  told  the  trawler  Ottilie  where  the  boats  had  been  left, 
and  enabled  her  to  find  them.  On  the  same  day,  March  27th, 
the  steamer  Vosges  was  sunk  by  shell  fire  after  a  two  hours' 
chase,  the  chief  engineer  being  killed. 

The  following  day,  Sunday,  March  28th,  witnessed  the 
first  U-boat  atrocity  on  a  grand  scale.  The  Elder-Dempster 
liner  Falaba,  Liverpool  to  South  Africa,  was  just  passing  out 
of  St.  George's  Channel  when  she  was  pursued  by  a  sub- 
marine. Seeing  that  escape  was  hopeless,  the  captain  stopped. 
"There  is  some  doubt,"  says  The  Times,  "about  the  exact 
number  of  minutes'  grace  accorded  by  the  German  com- 
mander, but  it  is  agreed  that  well  within  ten  minutes  the 
Falaba  was  torpedoed  at  100  yards  range,  when  the  enemy 
could  not  fail  to  see  that  the  deck  was  still  crowded  and  the 
first  boat  was  actually  half-way  down  the  davits.  The  tor- 
pedo struck  near  the  engine-room,   and  the  Falaba  sank 


62         THE  U-BOAT  WAR  ON  COMMERCE 

rapidly.  The  callousness  of  the  attack  was  aggravated  by 
the  conduct  of  the  Germans  when  their  victims  were  strug- 
gling in  the  water.  As  they  raised  their  arms,  reaching  out 
for  life-buoys  or  scraps  of  wreckage,  the  Germans  looked 
on  and  laughed,  and  answered  their  cries  for  help  with  jeers. 
This  charge  of  inhumanity  is  not  founded  on  any  isolated 
allegation.  It  is  the  definite  testimony  of  some  half-dozen 
survivors."  The  captain  was  not  drowned,  but  died  of  ex- 
posure. 

Among  the  victims — in  in  number — was  an  American 
citizen,  Mr.  Leon  Thrasher.  This  naturally  intensified  the 
indignation  felt  in  America,  and  it  was  already  foreseen  in 
many  quarters  that  if  Germany  persisted  in  so  reckless  a 
disregard  of  the  rights  not  only  of  noncombatants,  but  of 
neutrals,  the  traditional  aloofness  of  America  could  not  be 
permanently  maintained.  "The  sinking  of  the  Falaba/' 
said  the  New  York  Times,  "is  perhaps  the  most  shocking 
crime  of  the  war."  Though  less  wanton  and  purposeless 
than  the  attack  on  the  Amiral  Ganteaume,  it  was  equally  cruel 
in  intention  and  more  disastrous  in  effect.  It  proved  beyond 
all  question  that  the  spirit  of  modern  Germany  was  as  ruth- 
lessly inhuman  at  sea  as  on  land ;  but  the  world  had  not 
long  to  wait  for  still  more  startling  evidence  to  the  same 
effect. 

Hitherto  we  have  followed  with  some  minuteness  the 
record  of  German  submarine  activities,  in  order  to  trace  the 
gradual  decline  from  legitimate  and  honorable  warfare  to 
indiscriminate  maritime  murder.  Henceforth,  on  the  other 
hand,  anything  like  a  complete  "Catalogue  of  the  Ships" 
would  be  a  mere  weariness  of  the  spirit,  even  were  it  possible. 
We  must  be  content  to  register  some  of  the  more  salient  inci- 
dents of  the  campaign  of  massacre. 

As  to  the  principles  inspiring  it  there  is  no  longer  any 
doubt.  Six  months  after  the  outbreak  of  the  war  Germany 
had  finally  realized  that  her  scheme  of  world-conquest  had 
miscarried,  and  that  she  was  standing  on  the  defensive.  The 
mass  of  her  people,  and  her  soldiers  and  sailors  not  the  least, 
had  from  the  outset  taken  quite  seriously  the  ten-thousand- 
times  repeated  phrase  "Dleser  tins  aufgezzvungene  Krieg" 


THE  U-BOAT  WAR  ON  COMMERCE         63 

("This  war  which  has  been  forced  upon  us").  On  the  part 
of  her  rulers  it  had  at  first  been  a  conscious  and  purposeful 
lie — a  deliberate  move  in  the  war  gambit  invented  by  Bis- 
marck, who  openly  confessed  that  the  people  would  not 
throw  themselves  with  sufficient  ardor  into  a  war  in  which 
they  knew  themselves  to  be  the  aggressors.  But  even  the 
rulers  have  by  this  time  repeated  the  formula  so  often  that 
they  have  perhaps  come  to  believe  in  it ;  and  rulers  and  people 
are  at  one  in  holding  that,  when  Germany  is  on  the  de- 
fensive, she  is  absolved  from  all  the  traditional  decencies  of 
civilized  warfare,  and  not  only  entitled,  but  in  duty  bound, 
to  ignore  every  obligation  of  humanity  that  conflicts  in  the 
slightest  degree  with  her  immediate  interest  and  convenience. 
Only  thus  can  we  account  for  the  fact  that  such  events  as 
the  sinking  of  the  Falaba,  to  say  nothing  of  the  greater  crimes 
to  follow,  seem  to  have  elicited  scarcely  a  word  of  protest 
in  Germany.  Much  light  is  thrown  upon  the  German  frame 
of  mind  by  a  little  incident  which  occurred  just  at  the  time  we 
have  now  reached. 

Dn  April  1,  191 5,  three  trawlers,  the  Jason,  Gloxinia, 
and  Nellie,  were  sunk  by  the  U  10.  The  crew  of  the  Jason 
were  taken  on  board  the  submarine  and  were  well  treated. 
The  commander  expressed  regret,  but  said,  "We  have  orders 
to  sink  everything.  It  is  war,  and  you  started  it."  That 
is  the  whole  German  case.  It  is  built  upon  the  distinction 
which  undoubtedly  exists  between  the  rights  of  the  aggressor 
and  the  rights  of  his  victim.  If  a  highway  robber  were  to 
attack  me  on  a  lonely  road,  I  should  not  consider  myself 
bound,  in  repelling  him,  to  adhere  to  the  delicacies  of  the 
duello,  or  even  to  the  principles  of  fair-play.  The  Germans 
were  right  in  insisting  upon  this  ethical  distinction — the  weak 
point  of  their  case  lay  in  the  fact  that  they,  and  not  the 
Allies,  were  the  highway  robbers.  It  may  also  be  mentioned 
that  even  the  victim  of  an  assault  is  scarcely  justified  in 
massacring  the  wife  and  children  of  his  assailant. 

The  most  notable  feature  of  April,  1915,  was  the  harry- 
ing of  the  British  fishing  fleet.  On  April  19th  the  Admiralty 
announced :  "To-day  a  German  submarine  sank  by  a  tor- 
pedo the  trawler  Vanilla.    The  trawler  Fermo  endeavored 


64         THE  U-BOAT  WAR  ON  COMMERCE 

to  rescue  the  crew,  but  she  was  fired  at  and  driven  off.  All 
hands  on  the  Vanilla  were  lost.  This  killing  of  fisher-folk 
for  no  military  purpose  should  not  escape  attention.  It  is 
the  second  murder  of  this  character  committed  within  a 
week." 

The  Fermo  was  chased  for  four  hours  and  barely  es- 
caped. Three  days  later  the  trawler  St.  Lawrence  was  shelled 
and  sunk.  Most  of  the  crew  escaped,  but  the  submarine 
prevented  the  rescue  of  two  men  who  had  been  left  on  board. 

Meanwhile,  neutrals  were  learning  the  baselessness  of  the 
pretense  in  the  German  manifesto  that  what  they  had  to 
fear  in  the  war  zone  were  only  inevitable  errors  and  acci- 
dents. Neutral  ships  were  being  destroyed  with  the  greatest 
deliberation.  On  March  31st  the  Norwegian  barque  Nor  was 
burnt  because  her  cargo  of  timber  rendered  her  practically 
unsinkable.  On  April  22nd,  two  Norwegian  sailing  ships,  the 
Oscar  and  the  Eva,  were  deliberately  sunk  by  gunfire ;  and 
the  Norwegians  suffered  other  losses.  In  the  first  half  of 
April  two  Dutch  steamers,  the  Katwyk  and  the  Schieland, 
were  torpedoed  and  sunk.  On  May  1st  the  American  tank 
steamer  Gul flight,  from  Port  Arthur  (Texas)  to  Rouen, 
was  torpedoed  without  warning  off  the  Scilly  Islands.  The 
captain  died  of  heart  failure,  and  the  wireless  operator  and 
a  Spanish  seaman  were  drowned.  This  event  caused  great 
excitement  in  the  United  States;  yet  the  feeling  it  aroused 
was  but  a  ripple  compared  with  the  tidal  wave  of  horror 
and  indignation  which  swept  over  not  only  America,  but  all 
countries  in  which  war  madness  had  not  stifled  human  feel- 
ing, at  the  news  of  the  Lusitania's  destruction,  which  just 
a  week  later  was  flashed  round  the  world. 


NEUVE  CHAPELLE 

THE  FIRST  GREAT  ARTILLERY  ASSAULT 

MARCH   IOTH 

COUNT  DE  SOUZA  FRANK  R.  CANA 

A  BERLIN   MAGAZINE  ACCOUNT 

No  one  may  put  into  words  the  miseries  that  men  endured  during 
the  first  winter  of  the  trench  warfare.  Once  that  double  set  of  trenches 
with  the  "No-man's  land"  between  was  stretched  across  France,  men 
had  to  hold  it  night  and  day,  ever  on  the  watch  against  surprise  attack. 
New  necessities  are  rapidly  met  by  new  inventions  of  that  alert  and 
most  brilliant  of  earthly  organisms,  the  human  brain.  But  in  that  brief 
interim  between  necessity  and  invention,  what  must  not  men  suffer ! 
The  cold,  which  froze  feet  and  fingers ;  the  damp,  which  sent  rheuma- 
tism and  kindred  ills  through  every  muscle;  the  strain  of  watchfulness 
upon  exhausted  nerves ;  the  ever-present  hunger  and  the  racking  bom- 
bardments— active  warfare  came  as  a  relief  from  these.  The  British 
to  a  man  welcomed  the  first  big  spring  assault  of  1915,  the  battle  of 
Neu  /e  Chapelle. 

Both  the  French  and  British  accounts  of  this  battle  must  be  read 
with  some  reserve.  Patriotic  writers  are  naturally  trying  to  find  some 
good,  some  reason  for  satisfaction  with,  a.  struggle  most  exhaustive 
of  ammunition,  cruelly  costly  of  human  life,  and  inconclusive  of  re- 
sult. In  brief,  both  France  and  Britain  were  over-hopeful.  They 
thought  their  winter  of  preparation,  combined  with  Germany's  ex- 
haustive winter  campaign  against  Warsaw  in  the  east,  had  made  them 
stronger  than  their  foe.  They  attempted  to  test  this  by  an  early  spring 
offensive.  They  had  gathered  what  seemed  to  the  experts  of  that  day 
a  huge  store  of  ammunition.  They  employed  it,  the  French  in  the 
Champagne  district  and  the  British  at  Neuve  Chapelle,  in  an  effort  to 
break,  in  their  favor,  the  deadlock  of  the  trenches.  The  French  learned 
at  minor  cost  that  the  Germans  had  so  extended  trenches  behind 
trenches  that  the  defensive  was  still  immeasurably  stronger  than  their 
offense.  The  British  learned  this  also,  but  only  after  an  attack  far  more 
persistent  and  furious  and  self-destructive.  It  was  then  that  Marshal 
Joffre's  policy  of  "nibbling,"  of  leaving  to  the  Germans  the  offensive 
with  its  heavy  losses,  was  adopted — because  no  other  policy  had  yet 
proved  possible. 

BY   COUNT   CHARLES  DE   SOUZA 

THE  battle  of  Neuve  Chapelle  was  an  action  in  which 
through  a  surprise  attack  the  British  reconquered  the 
position  which  the  Germans  had  occupied  in  October  and 
w.,  vol.  in.— 5.  65 


66  NEUVE  CHAPELLE 

powerfully  organized  in  front  of  the  British  pivot  at  La 
Bassee.  This  position  formed  a  salient  in  the  British  line, 
and  in  order  to  preserve  the  integrity  of  that  line  (in  other 
words  to  make  it  stronger),  it  was  necessary  to  take  the  vil- 
lage of  Neuve  Chapelle — which  had  been  once  before  at- 
tacked unsuccessfully  (October  28th).  The  former  attempt 
had  failed  because  it  had  been  made  with  inadequate  means. 
This  time  the  operation  was  carried  out  by  two  army  corps, 
the  4th  Corps  and  the  Indian  Corps,  which  were  swiftly  and 
secretly  concentrated  on  the  line  Rue  d'Enfer-Richebourg 
St.  Vast,  their  forward  movement  being  covered  and  sup- 
ported by  the  fire  of  350  guns,  British  and  French. 

The  Germans  were  surprised,  outnumbered,  outflanked 
on  both  sides,  and,  after  a  stubborn  struggle,  they  were 
ousted  from  the  position.  The  victory  was  complete,  and 
would  have  been  more  satisfactory  had  it  been  less  costly. 
The  British  casualties  exceeded  12,000  out  of  50,000  men 
engaged  on  that  occasion. 

This  was  due  to  the  impetuosity  of  the  new  troops  and  of 
some  officers  who  misunderstood  the  object  of  the  attack, 
advanced  too  quickly  and  too  far,  and  thus  uselessly  exposed 
their  men  to  the  effects  of  the  severe  counterblows  which 
the  Germans,  with  their  accustomed  thoroughness,  did  not 
fail  to  deliver.  There  was  also  confusion  in  the  matter  of 
bringing  up  reinforcements.  The  position,  however,  re- 
mained in  the  possession  of  the  British,  although  their  oppo- 
nents did  all  they  could  to  recapture  it — a  fact  which  when 
contrasted  to  the  previous  engagement  makes  it  clear  that 
the  enemy  was  inferior  both  on  the  defense  and  the  attack. 

The  French  offensive  in  Champagne  which  synchronized 
with  the  battle  of  Neuve  Chapelle  was  a  more  lengthy  and 
methodical  affair;  it  had  also  a  totally  different  object.  It 
started  at  the  beginning  of  February  and  reached  its  climax 
at  the  date  of  Neuve  Chapelle;  it  was  carried  out  ostensibly 
to  relieve  the  "pressure"  exercised  at  the  time  by  the  Ger- 
mans on  the  Russians  in  East  Prussia  and  Suwalki ;  and  for 
that  reason  it  may  be  characterized  as  the  first  attempt  at  a 
coordination  of  movements  between  the  two  fronts.  Locally 
it  yielded  good  results ;  it  displayed  once  more  the  offensive 


NEUVE  CHAPELLE  67 

qualities  of  the  French  troops  and  gave  them  good  practice 
in  the  newly  adopted  methods  of  artillery  preparation  and 
the  combination  of  infantry  and  artillery  assaults  on  a  large 
scale ;  but  its  primary  object  was  not  attained,  simply  because 
it  was  sought  on  a  wrong  assumption.  Hindenburg's  con- 
temporaneous move  in  East  Prussia  was  a  false  one,  meant 
mainly  to  distract  the  attention  of  the  Russians  from  an- 
other sector  of  their  front. 

It  was  part  of  the  enemy's  plan  to  exaggerate  the  num- 
ber of  their  forces  in  that  quarter,  and  they  succeeded  so  far 
as  to  lead  the  Allies  to  believe  that  strong  German  units  were 
being  withdrawn  from  the  Western  front.  It  was  computed 
in  many  quarters  that  Hindenburg  had  fifteen  army  corps 
with  him  in  East  Prussia,  whereas  he  could  not  have  had 
more  than  a  third  of  that  number. 

Nevertheless,  General  d'Esperey's  movement  in  Cham- 
pagne was  brilliant.  The  artillery  bombardment  was  heavy 
and  effective.  Strong  hostile  positions  were  stormed  be- 
tween Souain,  Perthes  and  Beausejour,  and  the  French 
made  many  captures,  the  Germans  admitting  in  their  com- 
muniques that  their  losses  in  that  part  of  France  were  greater 
than  those  they  had  suffered  in  East  Prussia,  which  were 
computed  by  themselves  at  15,000. 

Finally,  this  French  movement  paved  the  way  for  the 
bigger  one  which  was  carried  out  at  the  same  spot  in  the 
autumn. 

BY  FRANK  R.  CANA 

Early  in  March  there  were  spells  of  bright  weather,  and 
the  water-logged  country  began  to  dry  up.  The  time  had 
come  for  a  vigorous  offensive  movement  by  the  British 
troops.  The  reasons  which  Sir  John  French  gave  for  this 
offensive  deserve  careful  consideration.  The  interdepend- 
ence of  the  operations  of  the  Russians,  French,  and  British 
should  be  particularly  noted.  It  should  also  be  noted  that  Sir 
John  was  contemplating,  not  a  general  advance,  but  a  move- 
ment with  a  definite  local  objective.  The  British  were  to 
"hold"  the  enemy  to  the  Western  front,  an  operation  incon- 


68  NEUVE  CHAPELLE 

sistent  with  "the  grand  offensive."  Sir  John,  in  his  dispatch 
of  April  5th,  wrote  as  follows : — 

"About  the  end  of  February  many  vital  considerations 
induced  me  to  believe  that  a  vigorous  offensive  movement  by 
the  forces  under  my  command  should  be  planned  and  carried 
out  at  the  earliest  possible  moment. 

"Amongst  the  more  important  reasons  which  convinced 
me  of  this  necessity  were :  The  general  aspect  of  the  Allied 
situation  throughout  Europe,  and  particularly  the  marked 
success  of  the  Russian  army  in  repelling  the  violent  on- 
slaughts of  Marshal  von  Hindenburg;  the  apparent  weaken- 
ing of  the  enemy  in  my  front,  and  the  necessity  for  assisting 
our  Russian  Allies  to  the  utmost  by  holding  as  many  hostile 
troops  as  possible  in  the  Western  theater;  the  efforts  to  this 
end  which  were  being  made  by  the  French  forces  at  Arras 
and  Champagne ;  and,  perhaps  the  most  weighty  considera- 
tion of  all,  the  need  of  fostering  the  offensive  spirit  in  the 
troops  under  my  command  after  the  trying  and  possibly 
enervating  experiences  which  they  had  gone  through  of  a 
severe  winter  in  the  trenches." 

Such  were  the  Commander-in-Chief's  reasons,  and  they 
clearly  limit  the  character  of  the  offensive  he  now  under- 
took, known  as  the  battle  of  Neuve  Chapelle.  The  object 
of  the  battle  was  the  capture  of  Neuve  Chapelle  and  the 
establishment  of  the  British  line  as  far  forward  as  possible 
to  the  east  of  that  place.  This  part  of  the  German  line  was 
held  by  the  Bavarians,  supported  by  Prussian  regiments,  the 
Crown  Prince  Rupprecht  of  Bavaria  being  in  command. 

Neuve  Chapelle,  after  the  heavy  fighting  in  November, 
1914,  had  again  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  Germans. 
The  village  lies  four  miles  north-northwest  of  La  Bassee 
and  about  a  mile  west  of  a  high  ridge  which  comes  from  the 
direction  of  Lille.  The  little  river  Des  Layes  flows  between 
Neuve  Chapelle  and  the  high  ground.  On  this  high  ground 
is  Aubers;  below  Aubers,  and  on  the  side  of  the  Layes 
furthest  from  Neuve  Chapelle,  is  the  hamlet  of  Pietre. 
South  of  Pietre  is  the  Bois  de  Biez,  the  German  position  in 
the  wood  being  protected  by  a  defended  bridge-head  over 
the  Layes.     It  was  Sir  John  French's  hope  that  the  taking 


NEUVE  CHAPELLE  69 

of  Neuve  Chapelle  would  be  followed  up  by  the  capture  of 
the  Aubers  ridge.  This  would  have  jeopardized  the  Ger- 
man position  at  La  Bassee  and  made  the  enemy  fear  for  the 
safety  of  Lille,  which  is  some  ten  miles  east  of  Aubers. 
The  whole  of  the  German  front  was  immensely  strong. 
Every  house  in  the  village  of  Neuve  Chapelle  had  been  turned 
into  a  fort,  while  just  north  of  the  village  was  a  triangle  of 
road  enclosing  an  area  in  which  were  a  few  big  houses,  with 
walls,  gardens,  orchards,  etc.  In  this  triangle  the  enemy, 
with  the  aid  of  many  machine  guns,  had  established  a  strong 
post,  which  flanked  the  approaches  to  Neuve  Chapelle.  . 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  task  assigned  to  the  British  troops 
was  difficult.  No  attempt  could  be  made  to  take  the  German 
positions  without  adequate  artillery  preparation,  and  at 
Neuve  Chapelle,  for  the  first  time  in  the  war,  so  far  as  the 
British  were  concerned,  a  force  of  artillery  had  been  con- 
centrated sufficient  for  its  purposes.  The  German  method 
of  bringing  an  overwhelming  and  sustained  mass  of  shell 
fir  2  on  to  a  given  area,  and  "flattening  out"  all  opposition, 
was  now  employed  against  them.  Sir  John  French  had 
given  to  General  Haig  and  troops  of  the  1st  Army  the  task 
of  capturing  Neuve  Chapelle.  The  4th  Corps  under  Sir 
Henry  Rawlinson  and  the  Indian  Corps  under  Sir  James 
Willcocks  were  chosen  to  make  the  attack,  supported  by  a 
large  force  of  heavy  artillery,  a  division  of  cavalry,  and 
some  infantry  of  the  general  reserve.  At  the  same  time 
troops  of  the  2nd  Army  were  told  to  keep  the  enemy  in  front 
of  them  occupied,  thus  preventing  reinforcements  being 
sent  by  the  Germans  from  those  portions  of  his  line  to  the 
main  point  of  attack.  These  supplementary  operations  of 
the  2nd  Army  had  the  desired  effect  and  resulted  in  the  cap- 
ture of  the  village  of  L'Epinette  (near  Armentieres)  and 
adjacent  farms,  but  do  not  call  for  any  further  mention.  To 
the  left  and  to  the  right  of  the  British  army  the  French 
troops  also  supported  its  action  by  very  heavy  artillery,  ma- 
chine gun,  and  infantry  fire. 

An  operation  such  as  that  contemplated  required  much 
prevision.  Though  the  attack  was  not  delivered  until  March 
10th,  Sir  Douglas  Haig  had  received  his  secret  instructions 


;o  NEUVE  CHAPELLE 

on  February  19th.  None  save  a  few  staff  officers  knew  of 
the  plans  until  all  was  ready,  and  the  Crown  Prince  Rup- 
precht  was  taken  by  surprise.  At  half -past  seven  in  the 
morning  of  the  10th  of  March,  some  four  hundred  great 
guns  and  howitzers  began  to  play  on  the  German  lines  at 
Neuve  Chapelle.  The  bombardment  was  most  effective, 
except  on  the  extreme  northern  portion  of  the  front  of  at- 
tack. Hell  opened  its  mouth  and  belched  forth  fire  and 
brimstone.  The  wind  was  torn,  the  ear  pierced  by  the  rush 
and  roar  of  thousands  of  high  explosive  and  shrapnel  shells. 
A  wall  of  fire  fell  upon  the  German  trenches,  and  the  men 
in  them  were  dazed  and  mazed ;  many  went  mad  with  horror. 
Others  were  still  hiding  in  their  dug-outs  after  the  fight  was 
over.  The  cruel  wire  entanglements  which  guarded  the 
trenches  were  in  several  places  swept  away  by  shrapnel  fire. 
And  the  hail  of  shell  continued,  the  gunners  working  with 
a  grim  joy  as  they  marked  how,  under  the  bombardment 
from  their  huge  howitzers  firing  lyddite,  the  enemy's 
trenches  fell  in  and  disappeared,  and  houses  were  hurtled 
into  the  sky.  Meantime  the  troops  who  were  to  make  the 
charge  waited.  They  were  the  21st,  22nd,  23rd,  24th,  and 
25th  Brigades  of  the  8th  Division,  4th  Corps,  and  the  Garh- 
wal  Brigade.  At  length  the  artillery  ceased,  and  at  8.5  a.  m. 
the  23rd  and  the  25th  Brigades  dashed  forward  to  the  Ger- 
man trenches  on  the  northwest  of  Neuve  Chapelle,  while 
the  Garhwal  Brigade  assaulted  the  enemy  trenches  south  of 
the  village.  The  artillery  had  only  stopped  momentarily  to 
get  its  new  range;  as  the  infantry  rushed  at  the  German 
trenches,  the  guns  turned  their  fire  on  to  Neuve  Chapelle 
itself. 

In  the  trenches  attacked  by  the  25th  and  Garhwal  Bri- 
gades there  was  little  opposition,  and  both  lines  were  car- 
ried with  slight  loss.  This  was  not  the  case  with  the  23rd 
Brigade,  which  found  the  wires  still  largely  uncut,  and  as 
they  endeavored  to  force  them  they  fell  in  scores  from  the 
enemy's  machine  gun  and  rifle  fire,  the  loss  being  especially1 
severe  in  the  Middlesex  Regiment  and  Scottish  Rifles.  The 
success  of  their  comrades  saved  the  Brigade,  for  both  the 
25th  and  Garhwal  Brigades  pushed  on  to  the  village  of 


NEUVE  CHAPELLE  71 

Neuve  Chapelle,  so  that  the  Germans  opposing  the  23rd  Bri- 
gade found  their  southern  flank  turned.  Thus  helped,  the 
23rd  Brigade  made  progress.  The  manner  in  which  the 
various  British  brigades  rendered  mutual  help  was  a  marked 
feature  of  the  fight.  The  Germans  fought  desperately  for 
possession  of  the  village,  and  it  had  to  be  cleared  house  by 
house,  the  British  advancing  over  heaps  of  dead  mixed  with 
the  debris  of  houses,  smashed  guns,  and  impedimenta  of  all 
kinds.  The  Germans  in  Neuve  Chapelle  itself  were  now 
without  hope;  it  was  death  or  surrender,  for  the  British  ar- 
tillery was  playing  beyond  the  village  and  created  a  curtain 
of  shrapnel  fire  through  which  nothing  could  pass  alive. 
Prince  Rupprecht  was  unable  to  send  a  single  man  to  the 
aid  of  the  defenders,  and  by  11  a.  m.  the  whole  village  and 
the  roads  leading  northwards  and  southwestwards  from  it 
were  in  the  hands  of  the  British. 

Notwithstanding  the  temporary  holding  up  of  the  23rd 
Brigade  the  day  had  been  so  far  extremely  favorable  for 
th  :  British ;  it  ended  less  auspiciously.  As  we  have  stated, 
it  had  been  designed  to  follow  up  the  capture  of  Neuve 
Chapelle  by  an  advance  on  Aubers.  Nor  were  the  Germans 
at  11  a.  m.  in  any  position  to  have  withstood  an  energetic 
advance.  Their  resistance  had  been  completely  paralyzed, 
as  was  proved  by  the  21st  Brigade  being  allowed  to*  form 
up  in  the  open  without  a  shot  being  fired  at  it.  But  the 
happy  moment  was  lost.  After  taking  Neuve  Chapelle,  too 
much  time  was  occupied  in  reorganizing  the  various  units, 
and  the  further  advance  did  not  begin  till  3.30  p.  m.  There 
were  reasons  for  the  delay.  The  infantry  was  greatly  dis- 
organized by  the  violent  nature  of  the  attack,  and  by  its 
passage  through  the  enemy's  trenches  and  the  buildings  of 
the  village.  It  was  necessary  to  get  units  to  some  extent 
together  before  pushing  on.  Moreover,  telephonic  commu- 
nication being  cut  by  the  enemy's  fire  rendered  communica- 
tion between  front  and  rear  most  difficult.  The  left  of  the 
23rd  Brigade  having  been  held  up  had  not  only  caused  de- 
lay in  itself,  but  had  involved  a  portion  of  the  25th  Brigade 
in  fighting  to  the  north  out  of  its  proper  direction  of  ad- 
vance.   All  this  required  adjustment.    An  orchard,  held  by 


.72  NEUVE  CHAPELLE 

the  enemy  north  of  Neuve  Chapelle,  also  threatened  the  flank 
of  an  advance  towards  the  Aubers  ridge.  These  were  all 
valid  reasons,  but  Sir  John  French  placed  it  on  record  that 
"this  delay  would  not  have  occurred  had  the  clearly  ex- 
pressed orders  of  General  Haig  been  more  carefully  ob- 
served." We  need  not  go  behind  or  beyond  the  field-mar- 
shal's criticism;  war  has  to  take  account  of  the  personal 
equation. 

When  the  advance  was  resumed  at  half -past  three  both 
the  2  ist  and  24th  Brigades  made  progress,  the  former 
towards  the  Pietre  windmills  and  the  appropriately  named 
Rue  d'Enfer  (a  collection  of  three  or  four  farmsteads)  ;  the 
latter  towards  Pietre  hamlet.  Both,  however,  were  even- 
tually held  up  by  concentrated  machine  gun  fire  from  Ger- 
mans established  in  houses  and  trenches.  The  25th  Bri- 
gade was  directed  towards  the  Des  Layes  River,  but  was 
also  held  up  by  machine  gun  fire  from  the  bridge-head  held 
by  the  Germans.  At  the  same  time  two  Indian  brigades, 
the  Dehra  Dun  and  the  Jullundur,  had  moved  to  attack  the 
Biez  wood,  but  they,  too,  were  stopped  at  the  line  of  the 
river  by  the  enfilading  fire  of  the  Germans  from  the  bridge. 

This  bridge  over  the  Layes  and  its  neighborhood  imme- 
diately assumed  considerable  importance.  "Whilst  artillery 
fire  was  brought  to  bear,"  wrote  Sir  John  French,  "as  far 
as  circumstances  would  permit,  on  this  point,  Sir  Douglas 
Haig  directed  the  ist  Corps  to  dispatch  one  or  more  bat- 
talions of  the  ist  Brigade  in  support  of  the  troops  attacking 
the  bridge.  Three  battalions  were  thus  sent  to  Richebourg 
St.  Vaast.  Darkness  coming  on,  and  the  enemy  having 
brought  up  reinforcements,  no  further  progress  could  be 
made,  and  the  Indian  Corps  and  4th  Corps  proceeded  to  con- 
solidate the  position  they  had  gained." 

The  day  had  not  proved  as  successful  for  the  British  as 
had  been  hoped,  but  there  was  no  justification  for  the  criti- 
cism of  armchair  tacticians,  who,  fed  by  lying  rumors  as 
to  the  magnitude  of  the  losses  and  the  "failure"  of  the  ad- 
vance, declared  the  whole  attack  to  be  "a  ghastly  mistake." 
During  the  day  the  whole  of  the  labyrinth  of  trenches  at 
and  around  Neuve  Chapelle  had  been  taken  on  a  front  of 


NEUVE  CHAPELLE  73 

4,000  yards  {2l/2  miles)  and  the  British  had  consolidated 
themselves  on  a  new  front  about  1,200  yards  beyond  the 
enemy's  advanced  trenches.  More  ground  had  been  gained, 
in  short,  than  on  any  other  day  since  the  battle  of  the 
Aisne. 

On  the  next  day,  March  nth,  the  battle  was  resumed. 
The  Germans  had  hurried  to  Lille  by  train  and  motors  a 
mass  of  men  from  distant  parts  of  the  Western  front,  and 
these  were  poured  into  Aubers,  the  line  of  the  Layes,  and 
the  Biez  wood,  to  oppose  the  further  British  advance.  We 
tell  the  story  of  the  end  of  the  battle  substantially  in  the 
words  of  Sir  John  French. 

"The  attack  on  the  German  positions  was  begun  on  the 
morning  of  March  nth  by  the  4th  and  Indian  Corps,  but 
it  was  soon  seen  that  a  further  advance  would  be  impos- 
sible until  the  artillery  had  dealt  effectively  with  the  vari- 
ous houses  and  defended  localities  which  held  up  the  troops 
along  the  entire  front.  Efforts  were  made  to  direct  the 
artillery  fire  accordingly;  but  owing  to  the  weather  condi- 
tions, which  did  not  permit  of  aerial  observation,  and  the 
fact  that  nearly  all  the  telephonic  communications  between 
the  artillery  observers  and  their  batteries  had  been  cut,  it 
was  impossible  to  do  so  with  sufficient  accuracy.  Even  when 
the  British  troops  which  were  pressing  forward  occupied 
a  house  here  and  there,  it  was  not  possible  to  stop  the  fire 
of  its  supporting  artillery,  and  in  consequence  some  of  the 
British  fell  victims  to  their  own  guns.  The  infantry  were 
therefore  withdrawn.  The  two  principal  points  which 
barred  the  advance  were  the  same  as  on  the  preceding  day 
— namely,  the  enemy's  position  about  Moulin  de  Pietre  and 
at  the  bridge  over  the  river  Des  Layes. 

By  the  12th  the  Germans  had  been  heavily  reenforced. 
The  chief  feature  of  the  day's  fighting  were  violent  counter- 
attacks delivered  by  them,  and  supported  by  artillery.  These 
counter-attacks  completely  failed,  Sir  John  French  calling 
special  attention  to  the  ease  with  which  they  were  repulsed. 
The  British  troops  were  elated  and  ready  to  continue  the 
struggle,  but  the  Commander-in-Chief  decided  otherwise. 
Most  of  the  objects  for  which  the  operation  had  been  un- 


74  NEUVE  CHAPELLE 

dertaken  had  been  attained,  and  on  the  night  of  March  12th 
Sir  Douglas  Haig  was  directed  to  hold  and  consolidate  the 
ground  gained  and  to  suspend,  for  the  time,  further  of- 
fensive operations.  The  Crown  Prince  Rupprecht,  stung 
especially  by  the  fact  that  his  army  had  been  beaten  by  the 
British,  whom  he  had  openly  reviled  in  orders  to  his  troops, 
endeavored  on  the  13th  by  numerous  further  attacks  to  re- 
gain the  ground  lost,  but  all  the  attacks  failed.  Later  Prince 
Rupprecht  endeavored  to  minimize  his  defeat  by  declaring 
that  the  British  had  brought  up  forty-eight  divisions  against 
three  German  divisions — an  obvious  falsehood  which  yet 
found  credence  in  Germany. 

Thus  ended  one  of  the  sternest  battles  on  the  Western 
front.  The  severity  of  the  contest  can  be  judged  from  the 
casualty  lists.  The  British  lost  190  officers  and  2,337  men 
killed,  359  officers  and  8,174  men  wounded,  and  27,  officers 
and  1,728  men  "missing"  (many  of  these  were  killed  but 
their  bodies  were  not  found — the  rest  were  taken  prisoners). 
Thus  the  total  British  casualties  were  nearly  13,000.  The 
enemy  suffered  more;  they  left  several  thousand  dead  on 
the  battlefield,  seen  and  counted  by  the  British,  and  removed 
over  12,000  wounded  by  train.  They  lost  in  prisoners  30 
officers  and  1,657  men — their  total  casualties  being  between 
17,000  and  1 8,000. 1  Many  of  the  prisoners  taken  on  the 
first  day  were  bright  yellow  in  color  from  the  effect  of  the 
lyddite  shells;  one  Prussian  officer  who  survived  the  tor- 
nado of  shell  fire  on  the  advanced  trenches  angrily  ex- 
claimed, "This  is  not  war,  it  is  murder."  That  their  own 
weapons  should  be  turned  against  them  always  roused  the 
ire  of  the  Prussians. 

Sir  John  French  did  not  consider  the  price  of  victory  too 
high.  In  a  special  Order  of  the  Day  to  Sir  Douglas  Haig 
and  the  1st  Army  the  Commander-in-Chief  said:  "I  am 
anxious  to  express  to  you  personally  my  warmest  apprecia- 
tion of  the  skillful  manner  in  which  you  have  carried  out 
your  orders,  and  my  fervent  and  most  heartfelt  appreciation 
of  the  magnificent  gallantry  and  devoted,  tenacious  courage 

1  These  figures  of  German  losses,  except  as  regards  prisoners,  have 
no  official  authority. 


NEUVE  CHAPELLE  75 

displayed  by  all  ranks  whom  you  have  ably  led  to  success 
and  victory." 

At  Neuve  Chapelle  the  Indian  troops  played  a  conspicu- 
ous part.  The  Indians,  entirely  unaccustomed  to  heavy  ar- 
tillery engagements  before  coming  to  France,  had  in  a  few 
months  become  inured  to  the  novel  conditions  of  warfare. 
They  were  much  elated  by  the  result  of  the  action,  and  con- 
tinually asked  when  they  were  going  to  have  another  chance. 
Many  stories  were  told  of  their  prowess.  One  Gurkha  made 
his  way  into  a  house,  and  single-handed  captured  five  Ger- 
mans, whom  he  marched  off  at  the  point  of  his  kukri.  Of 
similar  incidents  in  the  fight  much  might  be  written.  We 
make  the  following  extract  from  a  dispatch  by  the  "Eye- 
witness" at  British  headquarters,  as  it  pays  a  deserved  trib- 
ute to  the  bravery  of  the  German  officers.  The  German  offi- 
cer, as  an  American  observer  of  his  conduct  said,  was  too 
often  "a  combination  of  soldier,  blackmailer,  and  burglar," 
but  he  was  not  lacking  in  the  first  requisites  of  a  leader — 
courage : — 

"In  their  counter-attacks  from  the  Bois  du  Biez  the  Ger- 
man losses  were  tremendous.  Line  after  line  went  down  be- 
fore our  rifles.  Indeed,  in  their  picturesque  phraseology, 
some  of  our  Sepoys  said  that  shooting  the  enemy  was  like 
cutting  grain. 

"Our  men  in  action  in  this  quarter  were  so  excited  that 
they  clambered  up  on  to  the  parapets  in  order  to  see  better, 
and  obtain  greater  freedom  to  use  their  rifles.  In  some  of 
the  captured  trenches  then  held  by  us  there  was  not  room  on 
the  banquettes,  or  raised  portions,  from  which  men  fire,  for 
all  the  men  in  the  trench  to  shoot  at  the  same  time,  and  as 
the  action  proceeded,  those  below  in  rear  could  not  restrain 
their  impatience.  They  shouted,  'Get  down  and  give  us  a 
chance,'  some  even  pulling  down  those  in  front  in  order  to 
take  their  places.  One  battalion  reserved  its  fire  until  the 
Germans  were  only  fifty  yards  away,  and  then  opened  both 
with  rapid  rifle  fire  and  with  machine  guns. 

"The  German  officers  displayed  the  most  reckless  cour- 
age. On  more  than  one  occasion  they  invited  certain  death 
by  riding  forward  on  horseback  to  direct  the  attack  to1  within 


76  NEUVE  CHAPELLE 

a  few  hundred  yards  of  our  line.  None  of  those  who  so 
exposed  themselves  escaped.  One  Jager  in  charge  of  a  ma- 
chine gun  kept  his  gun  in  action  throughout  our  bombard- 
ment, and  then,  when  our  men  charged  down  upon  him, 
awaited  death,  calmly  standing  on  the  parapet  of  the  trench, 
and  emptying  his  revolver  at  them." 

BY  MARGARETE  MUNSTERBERG 
Translated  from  the  popular  Berlin  periodical,  the  "Kriegs-Rundschau" 

The  battlefield  of  Neuve  Chapelle  and  Givenchy — about 
7  or  8  kilometers  broad — is  bounded  on  the  north  by  the  rail- 
road Merville-Laventie-Armentieres,  on  the  south  by  the 
Canal  d'Aire  a  la  Bassee  and  is  crossed  by  two  main  high- 
ways, from  Estaires  to  La  Bassee,  and  from  Bethune  to 
Armentieres.  Through  this  territory,  in  a  southwesterly  di- 
rection, flow  the  rivers  Lawe  and  Louane,  which,  supplied 
by  a  multitude  of  brooks  and  small  rivulets  which  issue  from 
ponds,  empty  into  the  Canal  d'Aire  a  la  Bassee.  In  a  north- 
easterly direction  the  Lys  with  its  tributaries  flows  through 
the  battlefield,  and  farther  on  joins  the  Deule.  The  char- 
acter of  the  whole  region  follows  from  this  great  abundance 
of  water;  it  is  almost  perfectly  flat  and  does  not  rise  any 
higher  than  19  meters,  and  about  21  meters  in  the  south  near 
Givenchy.  Isolated  groves  and  hedges  break  the  monotony 
of  this  land  upon  which  the  exceedingly  fierce  battles  of 
March   ioth-i4th  were  fought. 

As  early  as  October  29,  1914,  our  infantry  regiment 
had  stormed  Neuve  Chapelle,  and  until  March  10th  we  were 
undisputed  masters  of  the  place.  At  the  beginning  of  March, 
however,  when  the  foggy  weather  began  and  observation 
from  the  air  was  impossible,  our  opponent  succeeded,  around 
March  10th,  in  carrying  out  movements  of  troops,  unnoticed 
by  us.  As  appeared  through  reports  in  English  newspa- 
pers, he  concentrated  no  less  than  two  army  corps,  consist- 
ing of  two  English  divisions,  two  Indian  divisions  and  Ca- 
nadian troops,  besides  very  strong  artillery,  a  part  of  which 
was  French,  for  a  joint  attack  upon  our  positions.  The  at- 
tack surprised  us  greatly,  but  found  us  by  no  means  unpre- 
pared, so  that  one  Jager  battalion  and  one  infantry  regi- 


NEUVE  CHAPELLE  77 

ment  were  able  for  the  present  to  repel  the  attack  of  the 
English. 

These,  however,  directed  an  overwhelming  artillery  fire 
— about  ten  to  twelve  grenades  (frequently  of  American 
origin)  to  one  meter  of  the  trench — against  our  lines  of  de- 
fense, which  were  completely  buried.  In  spite  of  these  un- 
favorable conditions,  the  English  attack  was  warded  off 
twice,  and  again  and  again  the  enemy  started  new  strong 
artillery  fire.  Contemporaneous  with  this  attack  upon  Neuve 
Chapelle,  the  English  started  a  further  attack  upon  Given- 
chy;  an  English  infantry  division  advanced  against  two 
German  battalions,  but  was  repulsed  with  enormous  losses 
through  the  fire  of  our  infantry  and  artillery.  The  English, 
advancing  in  great  masses,  were  mowed  down  in  sections. 
Meanwhile  the  fight  over  Neuve  Chapelle  continued.  Here 
Indian  troops  rushed  ahead — and  seemingly  unarmed.  In 
the  preceding  days  numerous  Indians  had  deserted  to  our 
lines,  hence  our  troops  believed  that  in  this  case  they  were 
again  dealing  with  deserters  and  so  did  not  shoot.  This  sin 
of  omission  was  thoroughly  avenged;  for  close  before  our 
positions  the  Indians  began  to  throw  hand  grenades  and 
attacked  the  garrison  of  our  trenches  with  knives. 

Through  these  attacks  by  very  superior  numbers  on 
March  10th,  our  troops  in  the  trenches  suffered  severely,  so 
that  reserves  had  to  be  brought  forward.  These  gathered 
under  terrible  English  fire  and  advanced  against  the  English 
with  contempt  of  death.  Although  they  did  not  succeed  on 
this  day  in  throwing  the  opponent  out  of  the  positions 
taken  by  him,  nevertheless  they  were  able  to  prevent  a  fur- 
ther advance  of  the  greatly  superior  enemy  forces  and  to 
hold  the  new  positions  against  all  attacks  of  the  opponent. 

On  March  nth  in  the  forenoon  strong  German  artil- 
lery fire  was  directed  against  the  enemy  positions,  and  the 
attacks  of  the  enemy  were  repulsed,  although  he  succeeded 
in  invading  Neuve  Chapelle  at  isolated  points. 

After  more  reserves  had  reached  us  on  March  12th  in  the 
forenoon,  we  did  the  attacking;  and  the  burning  desire  to 
settle  with  the  hated  English  accelerated  the  steps  of  each 
soldier.    We  succeeded  in  gaining  ground  at  several  points 


78 


NEUVE  CHAPELLE 


and  in  throwing  the  opponent  back  on  Neuve  Chapelle. 
The  complete  reconquest,  however,  of  the  place  Neuve 
Chapelle  itself,  which  was  constantly  under  heavy  enemy 
fire,  would  have  required  needless  sacrifices,  and  for  this 
reason  we  limited  ourselves  to  attaining  the  general  lines 
previously  held  by  us. 

The  strategic  plan  of  the  enemy  to  break  through  had 
failed  with  enormous  losses,  and  the  English  found  them- 
selves forced  to  give  up  their  plans.  But  the  great  moral 
success  of  the  fighting  round  Neuve  Chapelle  and  round 
Givenchy  lies  in  the  repulse  by  comparatively  weak  German 
troops,  of  his  attempt  to  break  through  which  was  under- 
taken with  such  great  masses.  Although  the  opponent  suc- 
ceeded in  winning  slight  tactical  successes  and  in  gaining 
territory,  these  successes  are  quite  out  of  proportion  to  the 
enormous  losses,  particularly  of  officers,  which  were  char- 
acterized as  "heavy"  even  by  the  enemy  himself. 

The  papers  have  brought  details,  taken  from  letters  and 
reports  of  officers,  about  the  English  method  of  warfare, 
which  have  been  made  known  to  the  German  troops  as  offi- 
cial warnings.  According  to  these,  in  the  battles  round 
Neuve  Chapelle,  250  Englishmen,  in  German  cloaks  and 
helmets,  lured  a  band  of  German  soldiers  toward  them, 
only  to  shoot  them  down  from  a  short  distance.  German 
prisoners  were  used,  as  it  were,  as  cover  by  the  English  dur- 
ing their  advance.2 

2  There  are  in  this  magazine  narrative  several  statements  against 
which  the  reader  should  be  warned.  First  is  the  habitually  reckless 
German  talk  about  American  ammunition.  Not  until  a  much  later 
period  did  American  ammunition  reach  the  Allies'  cannon  in  any  ap- 
preciable amount.  Second  is  the  implied  charge  of  wholesale  de- 
sertion by  the  British  Indians.  No  such  case  is  anywhere  on  record; 
the  Indian  regiments  fought  loyally  and  heroically  throughout  the 
War.  More  important  still  is  the  series  of  implications  in  the  final 
paragraph.  German  publications  frequently  made  vague  charges  of 
this  type;  but  all  actual  evidence  indicates  that  the  Britons  fought  as 
honorably  as  they  did  heroically.  The  German  Government  never  made 
any  effort  to  establish  these  charges,  presumably  finding  them  more 
useful  as  rumors,  a  form  which  protected  their  falsity  from  British 
disproof. 


THE  NAVAL  DISASTER  OF  THE 
DARDANELLES 

TURKEY  PROVES  THE  BRITISH  FLEET  IS  NOT  INVINCIBLE 

MARCH    l8TH 

HENRY   MORGENTHAU  HENRY   NEVINSON 

A  consecutive  Turkish  narrative  of  the  defense  of  the  Dardanelles 
will  probably  never  be  written ;  but  from  Ambassador  Morgenthau, 
that  strong  and  observant  American  diplomat  who  stood  nearest  to 
the  heart  of  the  Turkish  Government,  we  have  a  frank  and  careful 
record  of  what  the  Turkish  leaders  said  and  hoped  for  at  the  time. 
The  British  view  of  the  disastrous  event  is  given  by  a  British  expert 
on  military  and  naval  affairs. 

The  personages  mentioned  in  Mr.  Morgenthau's  account  have  been 
already  introduced  in  our  earlier  volume.  Wangenheim  and  Pallavi- 
cini  were  the  German  and  Austrian  Ambassadors  in  Turkey.  Enver 
was  their  Turkish  tool,  the  Minister  of  War  and  actual  ruler  of 
Turkey.  Talaat,  the  Minister  of  Finance,  had  been  the  leader  of 
Enver's  faction  until  the  War  crowded  Enver  to  the  front.  Mr. 
Churchill  was  the  sorely  harassed  but  ever-energetic  British  Minister 
of  Naval  Affairs. 

The  "Dardanelles"  is  the  name  given  to  the  southern  portion  of 
the  series  of  Turkish  waterways  which,  by  connecting  the  Mediter- 
ranean with  the  Black  Sea,  separate  Europe  from  Asia  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Constantinople.  The  southern  or  Mediterranean  mouth 
of  the  Dardanelles  is  more  than  a  hundred  miles  from  Constanti- 
nople; but  only  this  portion  of  the  passage  is  easily  defensible.  Once 
this  opening  had  been  forced,  the  road  to  Constantinople  would  have 
been  open,  and  the  city  must  have  surrendered  or  been  destroyed  by 
the  huge  naval  guns.  The  assault  was  made  chiefly  by  British  ships ; 
though  they  were  aided  by  four  French  men-of-war,  of  which  the 
largest,  the  Bonvct,  was  sunk  in  the  main  action,  of  March  18th. 

The  importance  of  this  assault  was  that  its  success  would  have 
broken  Turkey's  strength  completely  and  enabled  the  Allies  to  reach 
Russia  with  a  mass  of  much  needed  military  supplies.  Its  failure, 
on  the  other  hand,  released  the  East  from  its  fear  of  British  power, 
and  tremendously  strengthened  the  will  of  the  Turks  for  war.  This 
was  again  one  of  those  evenly  balanced  moments  which  hang  great 
with  fate.  Had  word  but  reached  the  Allied  commanders  of  the  ex- 
haustion of  the  Turkish  ammunition ;  had  they  but  endured  their 
heavy  losses  but  a  little  longer,  the  entire  issue  of  the  Great  W'ar 
might  have  been  changed.  Its  three  last  terrible  years  might  have  been 
escaped. 

79 


8o 


DISASTER  OF  THE  DARDANELLES 


BY   HENRY   MORGENTHAU  * 

ON  March  18th,  the  Allied  fleet  made  its  greatest  attack. 
As  all  the  world  knows,  that  attack  proved  disastrous 
to  the  Allies.  The  outcome  was  the  sinking  of  the  Bouvet, 
the  Ocean,  and  the  Irresistible  and  the  serious  crippling  of 
four  other  vessels.  Of  the  sixteen  ships  engaged  in  this 
battle  of  the  18th,  seven  were  thus  put  temporarily  or  per- 
manently out  of  action.  Naturally  the  Germans  and  Turks 
rejoiced  over  this  victory.  The  police  went  around,  and 
ordered  each  householder  to  display  a  prescribed  number  of 
flags  in  honor  of  the  event.  The  Turkish  people  have  so 
little  spontaneous  patriotism  or  enthusiasm  of  any  kind  that 
they  would  never  decorate  their  establishments  without  such 
definite  orders.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  neither  Germans  nor 
Turks  regarded  this  celebration  too  seriously,  for  they  were 
not  yet  persuaded  that  they  had  really  won  a  victory.  Most 
still  believed  that  the  Allied  fleets  would  succeed  in  forcing 
their  way  through.  The  only  question,  they  said,  was 
whether  the  Entente  was  ready  to  sacrifice  the  necessary 
number  of  ships.  Neither  Wangenheim  nor  Pallavicini  be- 
lieved that  the  disastrous  experience  of  the  18th  would  end 
the  naval  attack,  and  for  days  they  anxiously  waited  for 
the  fleet  to  return.  The  high  tension  lasted  for  days  and 
weeks  after  the  repulse  of  the  18th.  We  were  still  mo- 
mentarily expecting  the  renewal  of  the  attack.  But  the  great 
armada  never  returned. 

Should  it  have  come  back  ?  Could  the  Allied  ships  really 
have  captured  Constantinople?  I  am  constantly  asked  this 
question.  As  a  layman  my  own  opinion  can  have  little 
value,  but  I  have  quoted  the  opinions  of  the  German  gen- 
erals and  admirals,  and  of  the  Turks — practically  all  of 
whom,  except  Enver,  believed  that  the  enterprise  would  suc- 
ceed, and  I  am  half  inclined  to  believe  that  Enver's  attitude 
was  merely  a  case  of  graveyard  whistling.  In  what  I  now 
have  to  say  on  this  point,  therefore,  I  wish  it  understood 
that  I  am  giving  not  my  own  views,  but  merely  those  of  the 
officials  then  in  Turkey  who  were  best  qualified  to  judge. 
1  Reprinted  by  permission  from  "Ambassador  Morgenthau's  Story." 


DISASTER  OF  THE  DARDANELLES         81 

Enver  had  told  me,  in  our  talk  on  the  deck  of  the  Yuruk, 
that  he  had  "plenty  of  guns — plenty  of  ammunition."  But 
this  statement  was  not  true.  A  glimpse  at  the  map  will  show 
why  Turkey  was  not  receiving  munitions  from  Germany  or 
Austria  at  that  time.  The  fact  was  that  Turkey  was  just' 
as  completely  isolated  from  her  allies  then  as  was  Russia. 
There  were  two  railroad  lines  leading  from  Constantinople 
to  Germany.  One  went  by  way  of  Bulgaria  and  Serbia. 
Bulgaria  was  then  not  an  ally ;  even  though  she  had  winked 
at  the  passage  of  guns  and  shells,  this  line  could  not  have 
been  used,  since  Serbia,  which  controlled  the  vital  link  ex- 
tending from  Nish  to  Belgrade,  was  still  intact.  The  other 
railroad  line  went  through  Rumania,  by  way  of  Bucharest. 
This  route  was  independent  of  Serbia,  and,  had  the  Ru- 
manian Government  consented,  it  would  have  formed  a  clear 
route  from  the  Krupps  to  the  Dardanelles.  The  fact  that 
munitions  could  be  sent  with  the  connivance  of  the  Ru- 
manian Government  perhaps  accounts  for  the  suspicion  that 
guns  and  shells  were  going  by  that  route.  Day  after  day 
the  French  and  British  ministers  protested  at  Bucharest 
against  this  alleged  violation  of  neutrality,  only  to  be  met 
with  angry  denials  that  the  Germans  were  using  this  line. 
There  is  no  doubt  now  that  the  Rumanian  Government  was 
perfectly  honorable  in  making  these  denials.  It  is  not  un- 
likely that  the  Germans  themselves  started  all  these  stories, 
merely  to  fool  the  Allied  fleet  into  the  belief  that  their 
supplies  were  inexhaustible. 

Let  us  suppose  that  the  Allies  had  returned,  say  on  the 
morning  of  the  nineteenth,  what  would  have  happened? 
The  one  overwhelming  fact  is  that  the  fortifications  were 
very  short  of  ammunition.  They  had  almost  reached  the 
limit  of  their  resisting  power  when  the  British  fleet  passed 
out  on  the  afternoon  of  the  18th.  I  had  secured  permis- 
sion for  Mr.  George  A.  Schreiner,  the  well-known  Ameri- 
can correspondent  of  the  Associated  Press,  to  visit  the  Dar- 
danelles on  this  occasion.  On  the  night  of  the  18th,  this 
correspondent  discussed  the  situation  with  General  Mertens, 
who  was  the  chief  technical  officer  at  the  straits.     General 

W.,  VOL.  III. — 6. 


82         DISASTER  OF  THE  DARDANELLES 

Mertens  admitted  that  the  outlook  was  very  discouraging 
for  the  defense. 

"We  expect  that  the  British  will  come  back  early  to- 
morrow morning,"  he  said,  "and  if  they  do,  we  may  be  able 
to  hold  out  for  a  few  hours." 

General  Mertens  did  not  declare  in  so  many  words  that 
the  ammunition  was  practically  exhausted,  but  Mr.  Schreiner 
discovered  that  such  was  the  case.  The  fact  was  that  Fort 
Hamidie,  the  most  powerful  defense  on  the  Asiatic  side, 
had  just  seventeen  armor-piercing  shells  left,  while  at  Kilid- 
ul-Bahr,  which  was  the  main  defense  on  the  European  side, 
there  were  precisely  ten. 

"I  should  advise  you  to  get  up  at  six  o'clock  to-morrow 
morning,"  said  General  Mertens,  "and  take  to  the  Anatolian 
hills.     That's  what  we  are  going  to  do." 

The  troops  at  all  the  fortifications  had  their  orders  to 
man  the  guns  until  the  last  shell  had  been  fired  and  then 
to  abandon  the  forts. 

Once  these  defenses  became  helpless,  the  problem  of  the 
Allied  fleet  would  have  been  a  simple  one.  The  only  bar  to 
their  progress  would  have  been  the  mine-field,  which 
stretched  from  a  point  about  two  miles  north  of  Erenkeui 
to  Kilid-ul-Bahr.  But  the  Allied  fleet  had  plenty  of  mine- 
sweepers, which  could  have  made  a  channel  in  a  few  hours. 
North  of  Tchanak,  as  I  have  already  explained,  there  were 
a  few  guns,  but  they  were  of  the  1878  model,  and  could  not 
discharge  projectiles  that  could  pierce  modern  armor  plate. 
North  of  Point  Nagara  there  were  only  two  batteries,  and 
both  dated  from  1835  !  Thus,  once  having  silenced  the  outer 
straits,  there  was  nothing  to  bar  the  passage  to  Constanti- 
nople except  the  German  and  Turkish  warships.  The 
Goeben  was  the  only  first-class  fighting  ship  in  either  fleet, 
and  it  would  not  have  lasted  long  against  the  Queen  Eliza- 
beth. The  disproportion  in  the  strength  of  the  opposing 
fleets,  indeed,  was  so  enormous  that  it  is  doubtful  whether 
there  would  ever  have  been  an  engagement. 

Thus  the  Allied  fleet  would  have  appeared  before  Con- 
stantinople on  the  morning  of  the  twentieth.  What  would 
have  happened  then?    We  have  heard  much  discussion  as 


DISASTER  OF  THE  DARDANELLES         83 

to  whether  this  purely  naval  attack  was  justified.  Enver,  in 
his  conversation  with  me,  had  laid  much  stress  on  the  ab- 
surdity of  sending  a  fleet  to  Constantinople,  supported  by  no 
adequate  landing  force,  and  much  of  the  criticism  since 
passed  upon  the  Dardanelles  expedition  has  centered  on  that 
point.  Yet  it  is  my  opinion  that  this  exclusively  naval  at- 
tack was  justified.  I  base  this  judgment  purely  upon  the 
political  situation  which  then  existed  in  Turkey.  Under 
ordinary  circumstances  such  an  enterprise  would  probably 
have  been  a  foolish  one,  but  the  political  conditions  in  Con- 
stantinople then  were  not  ordinary.  There  was  no  solidly 
established  government  in  Turkey  at  that  time.  A  political 
committee,  not  exceeding  forty  members,  headed  by  Talaat, 
Enver,  and  Djemal,  controlled  the  Central  Government, 
but  their  authority  throughout  the  empire  was  exceedingly 
tenuous.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  whole  Ottoman  state,  on 
that  eighteenth  day  of  March,  191 5,  when  the  Allied  fleet 
abandoned  the  attack,  was  on  the  brink  of  dissolution.  All 
over  Turkey  ambitious  chieftains  had  arisen,  who  were  mo- 
mentarily expecting  its  fall,  and  who  were  looking  for  the 
opportunity  to  seize  their  parts  of  the  inheritance.  As  previ- 
ously described,  Djemal  had  already  organized  practically 
an  independent  government  in  Syria.  In  Smyrna  Rah  mi 
Bey,  the  Governor-General,  had  often  disregarded  the  au- 
thorities at  the  capital.  In  Adrianople  Hadji  Adil,  one  of 
the  most  courageous  Turks  of  the  time,  was  believed  to  be 
plotting  to  set  up  his  own  government.  Arabia  had  already 
become  practically  an  independent  nation.  Among  the  sub- 
ject races  the  spirit  of  revolt  was  rapidly  spreading.  The 
Greeks  and  the  Armenians  would  also  have  welcomed  an 
opportunity  to  strengthen  the  hands  of  the  Allies.  The  ex- 
isting financial  and  industrial  conditions  seemed  to  make 
revolution  inevitable.  Many  farmer" s  went  on  strike ;  they 
had  no  seeds  and  would  not  accept  them  as  a  free  gift  from 
the  Government  because,  they  said,  as  soon  as  their  crops 
should  be  garnered  the  armies  would  immediately  requisi- 
tion them.  As  for  Constantinople,  the  populace  there  and 
the  best  elements  among  the  Turks,  far  from  opposing  the 
arrival  of  the  Allied  fleet,  would  have  welcomed  it  with 


84         DISASTER  OF  THE  DARDANELLES 

joy.  The  Turks  themselves  were  praying  that  the  British 
and  French  would  take  their  city,  for  this  would  relieve 
them  of  the  controlling  gang,  emancipate  them  from  the 
hated  Germans,  bring  about  peace,  and  end  their  miseries. 

No  one  understood  this  better  than  Talaat.  He  was 
taking  no  chances  on  making  an  expeditious  retreat,  in  case 
the  Allied  fleet  appeared  before  the  city.  For  several  months 
the  Turkish  leaders  had  been  casting  envious  glances  at  a 
Minerva  automobile  that  had  been  reposing  in  the  Belgian 
legation  ever  since  Turkey's  declaration  of  war.  Talaat 
finally  obtained  possession  of  the  coveted  prize.  He  had  ob- 
tained somewhere  another  automobile,  which  he  had  loaded 
with  extra  tires,  gasolene,  and  all  the  other  essentials  of  a 
protracted  journey.  This  was  evidently  intended  to  accom- 
pany the  more  pretentious  machine  as  a  kind  of  "mother 
ship."  Talaat  stationed  these  automobiles  on  the  Asiatic 
side  of  the  city  with  chauffeurs  constantly  at  hand.  Every- 
thing was  prepared  to  leave  for  the  interior  of  Asia  Minor 
at  a  moment's  notice. 

But  the  great  Allied  armada  never  returned  to  the  at- 
tack. 

BY  HENRY  WOODD  NEVINSON 

Orders  for  washing  and  clean  clothes  (to  avoid  septic 
wounds)  were  issued  on  February  18th,  and  next  morning, 
in  clear  and  calm  weather,  "General  Quarters"  was  sounded. 
The  firing  began  at  eight,  and  the  first  scene  in  the  drama 
of  the  Dardanelles  Expedition  was  enacted. 

The  main  forts  to  be  destroyed  were  four  in  number; 
two  on  either  side  the  entrance.  One  stood  on  the  cliff  of 
Cape  Helles,  just  to  the  left  or  southwest  of  the  shelving 
amphitheater  afterwards  celebrated  as  V  Beach.  Another 
lay  low  down,  on  the  right  of  the  same  beach,  close  in  front 
of  the  medieval  castle  of  Seddel  Bahr,  where  still  one  sees 
lying  in  heaps  or  scattered  over  the  ground  huge  cannon- 
balls  of  stone,  such  as  were  hurled  at  Duckworth's  fleet 
more  than  a  century  before.  Upon  the  Asiatic  side  stood 
the  fort  of  Kum  Kali,  at  the  very  mouth  of  the  strait,  not  far 
from  the  cliff  village  of  Yenishehr,  and  separated  from  the 


DISASTER  OF  THE  DARDANELLES         85 

plain  of  Troy  by  the  river  Mendere,  near  neighbor  to  the 
Simois  and  Scamander  conjoined.  About  a  mile  down  the 
coast,  close  beside  Yenishehr  village,  is  the  remaining  fort 
of  Orkhanieh.  None  of  these  forts  was  heavily  armed. 
The  largest  guns  appear  to  have  been  10.2  inch  (six  on 
Seddel  Bahr,  and  four  on  Kum  Kali),  and  when  our  squad- 
ron drew  their  fire  their  extreme  range  was  found  to  be 
12,500  yards. 

Throughout  the  morning  of  February  19th,  Admiral 
Carden  concentrated  his  bombardment  upon  these  forts  at 
long  range,  and  they  made  no  reply.  Hoping  that  he  had 
silenced  or  utterly  destroyed  them,  he  advanced  six  ships 
to  closer  range  in  the  afternoon,  and  then  the  reply  came  in 
earnest,  though  the  shooting  was  poor.  At  sunset  he  with- 
drew the  ships,  though  Kum  Kali  was  still  firing.  In  evi- 
dence, he  admitted  that  "the  result  of  the  day's  action 
;howed  apparently  that  the  effect  of  long  range  bombard- 
ment by  direct  fire  on  modern  earthwork  forts  is  slight." 
It  was  a  lesson  repeated  time  after  time  throughout  the  cam- 
paign. The  big  naval  shells  threw  up  stones  and  earth  as 
from  volcanoes,  and  caused  great  alarm.  But  the  alarm  was 
temporary,  and  the  effect,  whether  on  earthworks  or 
trenches,  usually  disappointing.  For  naval  guns,  constructed 
to  strike  visible  objects  at  long  range  with  marvelous  ac- 
curacy, have  too  flat  a  trajectory  for  the  plunging  fire  (as 
of  howitzers)  which  devastates  earthworks  and  trenches.  It 
was  with  heavy  howitzers  that  the  Germans  destroyed  the 
forts  of  Liege,  Namur,  and  Antwerp,  and,  owing  to  this 
obvious  difference  in  the  weapons  employed,  Mr.  Churchill's 
expectation  of  crushing  the  Dardanelles  defenses  by  the  big 
guns  of  the  Queen  Elisabeth  and  the  Inflexible  was  frus- 
trated. 

Nevertheless,  after  a  few  days  of  driving  rain  and  heavy 
sea  (a  common  event  at  this  season,  which  might  have  been 
anticipated),  Admiral  Carden  renewed  the  bombardment  on 
February  25th,  employing  the  Queen  Elisabeth,  Irresistible, 
Agamemnon,  and  Gaulois.  The  Queen  Elisabeth,  firing 
beyond  the  enemy's  range,  assisted  in  silencing  the  powerful 
batteries  on  Cape  Helles,  and  though  the  Agamemnon  was 


86  DISASTER  OF  THE  DARDANELLES 

severely  struck  at  about  11,000  yards'  range,  the  subsidiary 
ships  Cornwcdlis,  Vengeance,  Triumph,  Albion,  Suffren, 
and  Charlemagne  stood  in  closer,  and  by  the  evening  com- 
pelled all  the  outer  forts  to  cease  fire.  Next  day  landing- 
parties  of  marines  were  put  ashore  to  complete  their  destruc- 
tion; which  they  did,  though  at  Kum  Kali  they  were  driven 
back  to  their  boats  with  some  loss.  The  story  that  marines 
had  tea  at  Krithia  and  climbed  Achi  Baba  for  the  view — 
places  soon  to  acquire  such  ill-omened  fame — is  mythical. 
But  certainly  they  met  with  no  opposition  on  the  Peninsula, 
and  if  a  large  military  force  had  then  been  available,  the 
gallant  but  appalling  events  of  the  landing  two  months  later 
would  never  have  occurred.  Had  not  the  War  Council  per- 
sisted in  the  design  of  a  solely  naval  attack,  even  after  their 
resolve  had  begun  to  waver,  a  large  military  force  might 
have  been  available,  either  then,  or  to  cooperate  with  a  simi- 
lar naval  movement  only  a  week  or  two  later. 

Stormy  weather  delayed  further  attack  till  March  4th, 
when  a  squadron,  including  the  Triumph,  Albion,  Lord 
Nelson,  and  Ocean,  passed  up  the  strait  to  a  position  beyond 
the  village  of  Erenkeui,  conspicuous  upon  a  mountainside 
of  the  Asiatic  coast,  and  bombarded  Fort  Dardanus.  The 
fort  stands  upon  Kephez  Point,  which  projects  as  though  to 
defend  the  very  entrance  of  the  Narrows.  Over  the  top  of 
the  promontory  the  houses  and  mosques  of  Chanak  and 
Kilid  Bahr  could  be  plainly  seen,  where  those  towns  face 
each  other  across  the  narrowest  part  of  the  passage.  Of 
the  eight  lines  of  mine-field  drawn  across  the  strait,  five  lay 
between  Kephez  Point  and  Chanak.  Day  and  night  our 
mine-sweeping  trawlers  were  engaged  upon  them,  and  con- 
siderable praise  must  be  given  to  the  courage  and  endurance 
of  their  crews,  who  for  the  most  part  had  been  North  Sea 
fishermen  before  the  expedition.  Their  service  throughout, 
whether  for  mine-sweeping  or  transport,  was  of  very  high 
value.  It  almost  justified  the  remark  made  to  me  by  a  skip- 
per whom  I  had  met  before  on  the  Dogger  Bank :  "If  the 
Kayser  had  knowed  as  we'd  got  trawlers,  he  would  never 
have  declared  war!" 

A  similar  advance  to  engage  the  forts  at  Dardanus,  and, 


DISASTER  OF  THE  DARDANELLES         87 

after  those  were  thought  to  be  silenced,  the  forts  at  Chanak 
and  Kilid  Bahr,  was  made  next  day,  and  again,  in  stronger 
force,  on  March  6th.  At  the  same  time,  on  the  6th,  the 
Queen  Elizabeth,  stationed  off  Gaba  Tepe  on  the  outer 
coast,  flung  her  vast  shells  clear  over  the  Peninsula  into  the 
Chanak  forts,  her  fire  being  directed  by  aeroplanes.  She 
was  supported  by  the  Agamemnon  and  Ocean,  and  there 
were  high  hopes  of  thus  crushing  out  the  big  guns  defend- 
ing the  Narrows,  some  of  which  were  believed  to  be  14-inch. 
Nevertheless,  when  the  four  French  battleships  advanced 
up  the  strait  on  the  following  day  (March  7th),  supported 
at  long  range  by  the  Agamemnon  and  her  sister  ship  Lord 
Nelson,  the  Chanak  forts  replied  with  an  effective  and  dam- 
aging fire.  It  was  impossible  to  say  when  a  fort  was  really 
out  of  action.  After  long  silence,  the  Turkish  and  German 
gunners  frequently  returned  and  reopened  fire,  as  though 
nothing  had  happened.  In  his  evidence,  Admiral  Carden 
stated  that  when  the  demolition  parties  landed  after  the 
bombardment  of  the  outer  forts,  they  found  70  per  cent,  of 
the  guns  apparently  intact  upon  their  mountings,  although 
their  magazines  were  blown  up  and  their  electrical  or  other 
communications  destroyed.  Still  worse  than  these  disap- 
pointing results  was  the  opportunity  left  to  the  enemy  of 
moving,  not  only  bodies  of  men,  but  field-guns  and  heavy 
howitzers  from  one  point  of  the  Peninsula  and  Asiatic  coast 
to  another,  and  opening  fire  upon  the  ships  from  concealed 
and  unexpected  positions.  Our  landing-parties  of  marines 
also  suffered  considerably  from  the  advantage  thus  given 
to  the  enemy,  as  happened  to  a  body  which  landed  at  Kum 
Kali  for  the  second  time  on  March  4th.  All  such  dangers 
and  hindrances  would  have  been  removed  if  the  navy  had 
been  supported  by  sufficient  military  force  to  occupy  the 
ground  behind  the  ships  as  they  advanced. 

Mr.  Churchill,  though  striving  to  restrain  his  impa- 
tience, strongly  urged  Admiral  Carden  to  press  forward 
the  naval  attack  with  the  utmost  vigor.  In  a  telegram  of 
March  1  ith  he  wrote :  "If  success  cannot  be  obtained  with- 
out loss  of  ships  and  men,  results  to  be  gained  are  important 
enough  to  justify  such  a  loss.     The  whole  operation  may 


88  DISASTER  OF  THE  DARDANELLES 

be  decided,  and  consequences  of  a  decisive  character  upon 
the  war  may  be  produced  by  the  turning  of  the  corner  Cha- 
nak.  .  .  .  We  have  no  wish  to  hurry  you  or  urge  you  be- 
yond your  judgment,  but  we  recognize  clearly  that  at  a  cer- 
tain period  in  your  operations  you  will  have  to  press  hard 
for  a  decision;  and  we  desire  to  know  whether,  in  your 
opinion,  that  period  has  now  arrived.  Every  well-con- 
ceived action  for  forcing  a  decision,  even  should  regret- 
table losses  be  entailed,  will  receive  our  support." 

To  this  Admiral  Carden  replied  that  he  considered  the 
stage  for  vigorous  action  had  now  been  reached,  but  that, 
when  the  fleet  entered  the  Sea  of  Marmora,  military  opera- 
tions on  a  large  scale  should  be  opened  at  once,  so  as  to 
secure  communications.  On  March  15th  Mr.  Churchill, 
still  anxious  not  to  allow  his  impatience  to  drive  him  into 
rashness,  telegraphed  again  that,  though  no  time  was  to  be 
lost,  there  should  be  no  undue  haste.  An  attempt  to  rush 
the  passage  without  having  cleared  a  channel  through  the 
mines  and  destroyed  the  primary  armament  of  the  forts  was 
not  contemplated.  The  close  cooperation  of  army  and  navy 
must  be  carefully  studied,  and  it  might  be  found  that  a 
naval  rush  would  be  costly  without  military  occupation  of 
the  Kilid  Bahr  plateau.  On  these  points  the  Admiral  was 
to  consult  with  the  General  who  was  being  sent  out  to  take 
command  of  the  troops.  To  all  of  this  Admiral  Carden 
agreed.  He  proposed  to  begin  vigorous  operations  on 
March  17th,  but  did  not  intend  to  rush  the  passage  before  a 
channel  was  cleared.  This  answer  was  telegraphed  on 
March  16th.  But  on  the  same  day  the  Admiral  resigned  his 
command  owing  to  serious  ill-health. 

Rear-Admiral  Sir  John  de  Robeck,  second  in  command, 
was  next  day  appointed  his  successor.  He  was  five  years 
younger,  was,  of  course,  fully  cognizant  of  the  plans,  and 
expressed  his  entire  approval  of  them.  Yet  it  appears  from 
his  evidence  that  though  strongly  urged  by  Mr.  Churchill 
to  act  on  "his  independent  and  separate  judgment,"  and 
not  to  hesitate  to  state  objections,  his  real  motive  in  carry- 
ing on  the  prearranged  scheme  was  not  so  much  his  con- 
fidence in  success  as  his  fear  lest  a  withdrawal  might  injure 


DISASTER  OF  THE  DARDANELLES         89 

our  prestige  in  the  Near  East ;  and,  secondly,  his  desire  to 
make  the  best  he  could  of  an  idea  which  he  regarded  as 
an  order.  "The  order  was  to  carry  out  a  certain  operation," 
he  said,  "or  to  try  to  do  it,  and  we  had  to  do  the  best  we 
could."  If  the  ships  got  through,  he,  like  many  others,  ex- 
pected a  revolution  or  other  political  change  in  Turkey. 
Otherwise,  he  saw  that  transports  could  not  come  up,  and 
that  the  ships  could  not  remain  in  the  Sea  of  Marmora  for 
more  than  a  fortnight  or  three  weeks,  but  would  have  to  run 
the  gauntlet  coming  down  again,  just  as  Admiral  Duck- 
worth did  in  1807.  In  his  telegram  accepting  the  com- 
mand, however,  he  made  no  mention  of  these  considera- 
tions, but  only  said  that  success  depended  upon  clearing  the 
mine-fields  after  silencing  the  forts. 

Indeed,  he  had  small  time  for  any  considerations.  For 
on  the  very  first  day  after  receiving  his  command  (March 
1 8th)  he  undertook  the  main  attempt  to  force  the  Nar- 
rows. The  weather  was  favorable — no  mist  and  little  wind. 
The  scheme  was  to  attack  in  three  squadrons  successively. 
The  first  blow  was  given  by  the  four  most  powerful  ships 
— Queen  Elizabeth,  Inflexible,  Lord  Nelson,  and  Agamem- 
non— which  poured  heavy  shell  at  long  range  into  the  forts 
at  Chanak  and  Kilid  Bahr,  while  the  Triumph  and  Prince 
George  bombarded  Fort  Dardanus  on  the  Asiatic  coast, 
and  Fort  Soghandere,  opposite  to  it  upon  the  Peninsula. 
This  bombardment  lasted  from  about  11  a.  m.  till  12.30 
p.  m.,  and  all  six  ships  found  themselves  exposed  to  heavy 
fire  from  the  forts,  and  from  hidden  howitzers  and  field- 
guns  in  varied  positions  upon  both  shores.  At  about  12.30 
the  second  squadron,  consisting  of  the  four  French  ships, 
came  up  into  action,  advancing  beyond  the  former  line  in 
the  direction  of  Kephez  Point.  Though  suffering  consid- 
erably (chiefly  owing  to  their  inability  to  maneuver  in  such 
narrow  waters,  thus  presenting  very  visible  and  almost  fixed 
targets  to  the  enemy's  guns),  the  ten  ships  maintained  the 
bombardment  for  about  an  hour  (till  nearly  1.30).  The 
enemy's  forts  then  fell  silent,  and  it  was  hoped  that  many 
of  them,  at  all  events,  had  been  destroyed. 

Accordingly,  the  third  squadron,  consisting  of  six  Brit- 


90         DISASTER  OF  THE  DARDANELLES 

ish  ships  (Irresistible,  Vengeance,  Ocean,  Swiftsure,  Ma- 
jestic, and  Albion),  were  brought  up,  with  the  design  of 
advancing  first  through  the  Narrows,  so  as  to  insure  a  clear 
passage  for  the  greater  ships  which  made  the  first  attack. 
At  the  same  time  the  four  French  ships,  together  with  the 
Triumph  and  Prince  George,  were  ordered  to  withdraw,  so 
as  to  leave  more  room  for  the  rest.  During  this  maneuver, 
all  or  nearly  all  the  guns  in  the  forts  opened  fire  again, 
their  silence  having  been  due,  not  to  destruction,  but  to  the 
absence  of  the  gunners,  driven  away  by  the  gases  or  terror 
of  our  shells.  Most  of  the  ships  suffered,  and  as  the  Bouvet 
moved  down  channel  with  her  companion  ships,  she  was 
struck  by  three  big  shells  in  quick  succession.  The  blows 
were  immediately  followed  by  a  vast  explosion.  It  is  dis- 
puted whether  this  was  due  to  a  shell  bursting  in  her  maga- 
zine, or  to  a  torpedo  fired  from  the  Asiatic  coast,  or,  as  the 
Admiralty  report  said,  to  a  mine  drifting  down  the  current. 
In  two  or  three  minutes  she  sank  in  deep  water  just  north 
of  Erenkeui,  carrying  nearly  the  whole  of  her  crew  to  the 
bottom.  The  cries  of  the  men  dragged  down  with  her,  or 
struggling  in  the  water  as  they  were  swept  downstream, 
sounded  over  the  strait. 

At  2.30  the  bombardment  of  all  the  forts  was  renewed, 
but  they  were  not  silenced.  At  4  o'clock  the  Irresistible  drew 
away  with  a  heavy  list.  Apparently  she  also  was  struck  by 
a  mine  adrift;  but  she  remained  afloat  for  nearly  two  hours, 
and  nearly  all  her  crew  were  saved  by  destroyers,  which 
swarmed  round  her  at  great  risk  to  themselves,  since  they 
offered  a  crowded  target.  A  quarter  of  an  hour  after  she 
sank,  the  Ocean  was  struck  in  a  similar  manner  (6.50  p.  m.) 
and  sank  with  great  rapidity.  Most  of  her  crew,  however, 
were  also  saved  by  destroyers  near  at  hand.  Many  of  the 
other  ships  were  struck  by  shell.  The  Inflexible  and  Gaulois 
suffered  especially,  and  only  just  crawled  back  to  be 
beached,  the  one  at  Tenedos,  the  other  at  Rabbit  Island.  At 
sunset  the  fleet  was  withdrawn.  It  had  been  proved  once 
more  that,  in  an  attack  upon  land  forts,  ships  lie  at  a  great 
disadvantage.  In  this  case  the  disadvantage  was  much  in- 
creased by  the  narrowness  of  the  waters,  which  brought 


DISASTER  OF  THE  DARDANELLES         91 

the  ships  within  range  of  howitzer  and  other  batteries  hid- 
den upon  both  shores,  and  also  gave  special  opportunity  for 
the  use  of  mines  drifting  on  the  rapid  current,  or  anchored 
right  across  the  channel  in  successive  rows.  The  mines  of 
the  second  row  were  opposite  the  intervals  in  the  first,  and 
so  on,  until  the  passage  was  covered  as  with  a  net,  each  row 
containing  twenty-six  mines.  Whether  shore-torpedoes 
were  also  used  is  still  uncertain.  But,  without  them,  the 
fleet  suffered  under  sufficient  disadvantages  to  explain  the 
failure.  The  first  serious  attempt  to  force  the  Straits  was 
the  last. 

Mr.  Churchill  wished  to  renew  the  attempt  at  once. 
Perhaps  he  thought  that  English  people  are  given  to  ex- 
aggerate the  loss  of  a  battleship.  After  all,  the  loss  of  even 
three  battleships  is  far  surpassed  by  the  loss  of  lives  and 
calculable  wealth  in  one  day's  ordinary  fighting  in  France, 
and  the  objective  in  the  Dardanelles  was  at  least  as  vital. 
Lord  Fisher  and  Sir  Arthur  Wilson  agreed  that  the  action 
should  be  continued,  and  the  London  and  Prince  of  Wales, 
in  addition  to  the  Queen  and  Implacable,  were  actually  sent 
to  reenforce.  The  French  also  sent  an  old  battleship  (the 
Henri  IV.)  to  replace  the  Bonvet.  At  first  Admiral  de 
Robeck  shared  this  view.  It  was  suspected  at  the  Ad- 
miralty that  the  ammunition  in  the  forts  was  running  short, 
and,  at  a  much  later  date,  Enver  Pasha  is  reported  to  have 
said: 

"If  the  English  had  only  had  the  courage  to  rush  more 
ships  through  the  Dardanelles,  they  could  have  got  to  Con- 
stantinople; but  their  delay  enabled  us  thoroughly  to  fortify 
the  Peninsula,  and  in  six  weeks'  time  we  had  taken  down 
there  over  200  Austrian  Skoda  guns."  2 

That  delay  of  six  weeks  was  fatal,  but  the  navy  was  not 
to  blame.     On  March  22nd  Admiral  de  Robeck  and  Ad- 

2 Speaking  of  this  naval  attack,  Dr.  Stiirmer  writes:  "To  their 
great  astonishment  the  gallant  defenders  of  the  coast  forts  found  that 
the  attack  had  suddenly  ceased.  Dozens  of  the  German  naval  gun- 
ners who  were  manning  the  batteries  of  Chanak  on  that  memorable 
day  told  me  later  that  they  had  quite  made  up  their  minds  the  fleet 
would  ultimately  win,  and  that  they  themselves  could  not  have  held 
out  much  longer." — 'Two  War  Years  in  Constantinople." 


92 


DISASTER  OF  THE  DARDANELLES 


miral  Wemyss  consulted  with  Sir  Ian  Hamilton  (who  on 
the  very  day  before  the  engagement  had  arrived  at  Tenedos 
to  take  command  of  the  land  forces)  and  with  General 
Birdwood ;  and  as  their  decision  to  await  the  concentration 
of  the  army  was  accepted  by  Lord  Fisher  and  the  other 
Admiralty  advisers,  Mr.  Churchill  reluctantly  yielded.  Gen- 
eral Birdwood,  it  is  true,  wished  to  land  at  once,  even  with 
such  troops  as  were  at  hand.  Sir  Ian  "thought  there  was 
a  good  deal  to  be  said  for  it,"  and  as  to  the  fleet,  he  urged 
the  Admiral  to  keep  on  hammering  the  forts.  But  his  or- 
ders from  Lord  Kitchener  were  "not  to  land  if  he  could 
avoid  it,"  and  in  any  case  to  await  the  arrival  of  the  29th 
Division. 

And  where  was  the  29th  Division?  On  March  23rd  its 
first  transport  was  just  reaching  Malta,  where  nearly  all 
the  officers  attended  a  special  performance  of  Faust. 


THE  SURRENDER  OF  PRZEMYSL 

AUSTRIA  LOSES  HER  LAST  EASTERN  STRONGHOLD 

MARCH    22ND 

GENERAL  KROBATIN  STANLEY  WASHBURN 

DIARY  OF  A  RUSSIAN  OFFICER 

Przemysl,  as  told  in  our  preceding  volume,  was  the  chief  Austrian 
stronghold  in  the  eastern  Austrian  domain,  the  Polish  province  of 
Galicia.  In  1914  it  had  been  twice  besieged  by  the  Russians.  They 
had  assailed  it  for  a  month  in  vain  after  their  great  victory  at  Lemberg, 
had  withdrawn  from  the  siege  at  the  time  of  Hindenburg's  first  ad- 
vance on  Poland,  and  had  then  returned  to  renew  the  beleaguerment 
in  November.  For  four  months  thereafter  Przemysl  loomed  large 
in  the  eyes  of  the  world  as  the  one  remaining  point  of  Austrian  re- 
sistance east  of  the  Carpathian  Mountains  and  the  plains  of  Hungary. 

The  siege  of  Przemysl  presented  the  only  example  of  such  old- 
time  strategic  warfare  in  the  European  field  of  the  War.  The  city 
was  completely  surrounded  and  the  army  within  it  was  reduced  to 
surrender  by  starvation.  This  entailed  of  course  much  misery  to  the 
civilian  population.  These  were  mainly  of  Slavic  race  and  had  small 
sympathy  for  the  Austrian  cause  in  which  they  suffered.  Indeed, 
as  the  following  anonymous  diary  of  a  Russian  prisoner  within  the 
city  shows,  the  final  surrender  was  to  most  of  the  inhabitants  an 
occasion  for  much  rejoicing.  They  could  not  guess  how  soon  they 
were  to  be  once  again  under  Austrian  control.  The  grim  seesaw 
of  the  hungry  armies  back  and  forth  across  this  Polish  region  of 
Central  Europe  meant  an  awful  and  repeated  tragedy  of  destruction 
to  the  defenseless  Poles. 

The  official  Austrian  account  of  the  siege  is  here  given  by  the  Aus- 
trian Minister  of  War,  and  the  Russian  view  is  presented  by  Mr. 
Stanley  Washburn,  the  official  British  witness  with  the  Russian  army. 

BY  GENERAL  KROBATIN 

THE  garrison  of  the  fortress  held  Przemysl  to  the  very 
last  hour  that  human  force  could  do  so  in  the  military 
sense  of  the  word.  General  Kusmanek  only  surrendered 
when  such  a  course  was  dictated  by  feelings  of  humanity 
and  military  consideration.  On  the  day  of  the  surrender 
there  was  not  one  morsel  of  food  in  the  fortress,  and  no 
breakfast  could  be  supplied  to  the  men. 

Events  developed  around  Przemysl  more  quickly  than 

93 


94  THE  SURRENDER  OF  PRZEMYSL 

was  expected.  The  last  sortie  officially  reported  was  di- 
rected towards  the  east,  and  was  undertaken  not  with  the 
view  of  effecting  the  relief  of  the  fortress,  but  to  find  out 
if  the  surrounding  Russian  force  was  as  strong  towards 
Grodek  and  Lemberg  as  in  the  other  directions,  and  whether 
the  Russians  had  fortified  their  positions  in  the  Grodek  di- 
rection, as  well  as  to  the  south  and  west  of  the  fortress.  It 
was  ascertained  during  the  sorties  that  this  was  the  case. 
The  Russians,  in  fact,  built  counter-fortifications  all  around 
the  fortress,  even  in  the  direction  of  their  own  territory, 
preparing  for  all  eventualities.  In  fact,  the  last  reports  com- 
ing from  the  fortress  all  confirmed  the  report  that  the  Rus- 
sians built  a  new  fortress  all  around  the  besieged  terri- 
tory. The  fortifications  were  so  constructed  as  to  consti- 
tute an  impenetrable  obstacle  to  inward  attacks,  just  the 
counter-form  of  the  fortifications  and  defensive  works  of 
the  fortress  itself.  The  Russian  ring  was  constructed  ex- 
clusively against  Przemysl  with  unparalleled  skill  and  rapid- 
ity, and  with  all  available  means  of  modern  technic. 

On  the  west  a  well-fortified  defending  line  and  on  the 
south  a  large  Russian  army  stood  in  the  way  of  any  at- 
tempt to  relieve  Przemysl.  In  addition,  the  roads  leading 
towards  Russia  were  well  fortified,  as  the  last  sortie  proved. 
This  was  the  military  situation  of  the  fortress  during  the 
last  weeks. 

With  regard  to  provisions  the  fortress  was  well  sup- 
plied at  the  outset,  but  the  stores  were  consumed  at  the 
time  of  the  first  investment,  which  lasted  until  October 
nth.  On  that  date  the  fortress  was  relieved,  and  General 
Borvevich  entered  the  fortress  with  his  army.  The  rail- 
way lines  had  been  blown  up  by  the  retreating  Russians. 
On  the  Galician  roads  it  was  impossible  to  transport  any- 
thing at  that  time,  and  this  fact  obliged  us  to  provision  the 
army  fighting  to  the  east  of  Przemysl  from  the  stores  of 
the  fortress,  the  army  being  cut  off  from  all  other  points 
of  supply. 

It  was  thus  necessary  to  draw  provisions  from  the  ample 
stores  of  Przemysl  in  the  hope  that  as  soon  as  the  railway 
line  was  reconstructed  the  stores  could  be  replaced.     The 


THE  SURRENDER  OF  PRZEMYSL  95 

railway  line  was  reconstructed,  and  on  October  23rd  the 
first  trains  began  to  move  towards  the  fortress. 

At  the  end  of  ten  days,  however,  and  before  the  defi- 
ciencies could  be  made  good,  Przemysl  was  invested  anew. 

At  this  period  the  situation  in  North  Poland  made  it 
necessary  for  us  to  withdraw  our  flank  in  Galicia.  During 
the  ten  days  at  our  disposal  the  transport  of  ammunition 
took  first  place.  The  question  of  provisioning  the  fortress 
appearing  at  that  time  to  be  a  secondary  matter,  when 
eventually  food  supplies  were  dispatched  to  Przemysl  it  was 
too  late. 

During  the  first  days  of  the  investment,  in  November, 
General  Kusmanek  took  stock  of  the  available  quantity  of 
foodstuffs,  and  drew  up  a  scale  of  rations.  He  took  great 
care  that  neither  officers  nor  men  should  get  more  than 
the  minimum  of  everything.  For  breakfast  they  had  only 
tea,  for  their  midday  meal  a  small  piece  of  meat  and  half  a 
pound  of  bread,  and  in  the  evening  tea  again,  with  some 
bread.  To  add  to  the  meat  supply  thousands  of  horses  were 
slaughtered,  which  was  all  the  more  necessary  on  account 
of  the  shortage  in  fodder.  Later  on  this  minimum  was 
further  reduced,  so  that  the  men  of  the  garrison  were  on 
almost  starvation  diet  for  the  last  two  months  of  the  siege. 

It  has  been  said  in  some  quarters  that  flying  machines 
and  dirigibles  might  have  been  used  in  bringing  in  supplies, 
but  this  idea  was  excluded  from  the  beginning.  Such  flour 
or  meat  as  could  have  been  thus  brought  in  would  only  have 
sufficed  a  few  hundred  men  for  a  few  days,  and  to  have 
made  any  appreciable  difference  all  the  aeroplanes  and 
dirigibles  of  the  world  would  have  had  to  have  been  em- 
ployed daily.  The  commander  of  the  fortress  vetoed  the 
idea  that  certain  members  of  the  garrison  should  receive 
food  by  this  means  whilst  the  rest  put  up  with  the  rations 
available  in  the  fortress.  Even  the  game  shot  by  some  of 
the  officers  was  not  allowed  to  be  brought  in,  but  was 
cooked  and  eaten  in  the  hunting  field.  The  aeroplanes 
only  brought  in  letters,  medicines,  and  material  for  the 
wireless  telegraphy. 

The  food  supply  grew  daily  more  and  more  scanty,  un- 


96  THE  SURRENDER  OF  PRZEMYSL 

til  on  the  morning  of  the  22nd  there  was  not  a  particle  of 
bread  in  the  stores,  not  a  pound  of  meat  or  flour  available, 
so  that  the  commander  of  the  fortress  decided  to  surrender. 

The  sortie  above  referred  to  had  no  effect  whatever 
but  soon  after  this  the  Russian  besieging  army  began  a  vio- 
lent attack  from  the  north  and  east  with  the  object  of  as- 
certaining what  powers  of  resistance  the  famished  and  ex- 
hausted garrison  still  possessed.  How  our  poor  soldiers 
could  bear  the  brunt  of  these  attacks  is  a  mystery,  but  Gen- 
eral Tamassy's  Honveds  succeeded  in  repulsing  them. 
These  weak  and  famished  soldiers  had  courage  and  en- 
thusiasm enough  to  face  the  onslaught  of  the  healthy,  well- 
fed  Russians,  and  succeeded  in  repulsing  them  from  beneath 
the  fortress.    True,  this  was  their  last  effort. 

After  this  battle,  which  lasted  seven  hours,  General 
Kusmanek  and  his  staff  saw  that  another  sortie  was  im- 
possible, the  investing  ring  being  too  strong  for  even  a 
well-fed  army  to  break  through. 

BY  STANLEY   WASHBURN 

In  spite  of  all  the  very  obvious  failures  to  achieve  any 
definite  advantage  over  the  Russians,  the  spirits  of  the  anti- 
Russian  element  were  kept  buoyed  up  by  the  spectacle  of 
the  great  fortress  in  Galicia  still  holding  out.  "As  long 
as  Przemysl  stands  out  there  is  hope,"  seems  to  have  been 
the  general  opinion  of  all  who  wished  ill  to  the  Russians. 
Thus  the  fortress,  which  at  the  outset  might  have  been 
abandoned  with  small  loss  of  prestige  to  the  Austrians, 
gradually  came  to  have  a  political  as  well  as  military  sig- 
nificance of  the  most  far-reaching  importance.  In  the  gen- 
eral crash  after  the  battle  of  the  Grodek  line,  the  loss  of  a 
town  which  until  then  had  never  been  heard  of  in  the 
West,  outside  of  military  circles,  would  have  escaped  any- 
thing more  than  passing  comment.  Not  until  the  Russian 
armies  had  actually  swept  past  its  trenches  and  masked  its 
forts,  did  the  world  at  large  know  that  such  a  place  was 
on  the  map;  even  then  the  greatest  interest  manifested  was 
in  the  vexed  question  as  to  how  its  name  was  pronounced, 
if  indeed  it  could  be  done  at  all,  an  opinion  which  was  held 


THE  SURRENDER  OF  PRZEMYSL  97 

by  not  a  few  people.1  This  place,  which  could  have  been 
given  up  earlier  in  the  war  without  any  important  sacri- 
fice, was  held  tenaciously  and  became  one  of  the  vital  points 
of  strategy  in  the  whole  campaign.  An  army,  which  turned 
out  to  be  a  huge  one,  was  isolated  from  the  field  armies 
of  Austria  at  a  time  when  she  needed  every  able-bodied 
man  that  she  could  get;  and  Przemysl,  which,  as  we  see 
now,  was  doomed  from  the  start,  was  allowed  to  assume 
an  importance  in  the  campaign  which  made  its  fall  not  only 
a  severe  military  loss  but  a  blow  to  the  hopes  of  the  Aus- 
trians,  both  at  home  and  in  Galicia.  The  fall  of  this  for- 
tress has  gone  further  towards  shattering  any  hopes  of  ulti- 
mate victory  that  have  been  entertained  than  anything  that 
has  occurred  since  the  war  started. 

One's  preconceived  idea  of  what  a  modern  fortress 
looks  like  vanishes  rapidly  as  one  enters  Przemysl.  In  time 
of  peace  it  is  probable  that  a  layman  might  pass  into  this 
town  without  suspecting  at  all  that  its  power  of  resisting  at- 
tack is  nearly  as  great  as  any  position  in  all  Europe.  Now, 
of  course,  innumerable  field  works,  trenches,  and  impro- 
vised defenses  at  once  attract  the  attention;  but  other  than 
these  there  is  visible  from  the  main  road  but  one  fortress, 
which,  approached  from  the  east  is  so  extremely  unpre- 
tentious in  appearance  that  it  is  doubtful  if  one  would  give 
it  more  than  a  passing  glance  if  one  were  not  on  the  lookout 
for  it. 

Przemysl  itself  is  an  extremely  old  town  which  I  be- 
lieve was  for  nearly  1,000  years  a  Russian  city.  From  re- 
mote days  of  antiquity  it  has  been  a  fortress,  and  following 
the  ancient  tradition,  each  successive  generation  has  kept 
improving  its  defenses  until  to-day  it  is  in  reality  a  modern 
stronghold.  Why  the  Austrians  have  made  this  city,  which 
in  itself  is  of  no  great  importance,  the  site  of  their  strong- 
est position,  is  not  in  the  least  obvious  to  the  layman  ob- 
server. The  town  itself,  a  mixture  of  quaint  old  buildings 
and  comparatively  modern  structures,  lies  on  the  east  bank 
of  the  river  San  and  perhaps  3  kilometers  above  the  point 

The  pronunciation  generally  adopted  in  America  is  pra-meel. 
W.,  VOL.  III.— 7. 


98  THE  SURRENDER  OF  PRZEMYSL 

where  the  small  stream  of  the  Wiar  comes  in  from  the 
south.  The  little  city  is  hardly  visible  until  one  is  almost 
upon  it,  so  well  screened  is  it  by  rolling  hills  that  lie  all 
about  it.  Probably  the  prevailing  impression  in  the  world 
has  been  that  the  Russian  great  guns  have  been  dropping 
shells  into  the  heart  of  the  town;  many  people  even  in 
Lwow  believe  it  to  be  in  a  half-ruined  condition.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  nearest  of  the  first  line  of  forts  is  about 
10  kilometers  from  the  town  itself,  so  that  in  the  whole 
siege  not  a  shell  from  the  Russian  batteries  has  fallen  in  the 
town  itself.  Probably  none  has  actually  fallen  within  5 
kilometers  of  the  city.  There  was  therefore  no  danger  of 
the  civilian  population  suffering  anything  from  the  bom- 
bardment while  the  outer  line  of  forts  held  as  they  did  from 
the  beginning. 

The  only  forts  or  works  which  we  were  given  the  op- 
portunity of  seeing,  were  those  visible  from  the  road,  the 
authorities  informing  us  that  they  had  reason  to  believe  that 
many  of  the  trenches  and  positions  were  mined,  and  that 
no  one  would  be  permitted  in  them  until  they  had  been  ex- 
amined by  the  engineers  of  the  army  and  pronounced  safe. 
If  the  works  seen  from  the  road  are  typical  of  the  defenses, 
and  I  believe  they  are,  one  can  quite  well  realize  the  im- 
pregnable nature  of  the  whole  position.  The  road  from 
Lwow  comes  over  the  crest  of  a  hill  and  stretches  like  a 
broad  ribbon  for  perhaps  5  kilometers  over  an  open  plain, 
on  the  western  edge  of  which  a  slight  rise  of  ground  gives 
the  elevation  necessary  for  the  first  Austrian  line.  To  the 
north  of  the  road  is  a  fort,  with  the  glacis  so  beautifully 
sodded  that  it  is  hardly  noticeable  as  one  approaches,  though 
the  back  is  dug  out  and  galleried  for  heavy  guns.  Before 
this  is  a  ditch  with  six  rows  of  sunken  barbed  wire  entangle- 
ments, and  a  hundred  yards  from  this  is  another  series  of 
entanglements  twelve  rows  deep,  and  so  criss-crossed  with 
barbed  wire  that  it  would  take  a  man  hours  to  cut  his  way 
through  with  no  other  opposition. 

After  a  few  experiments  against  the  works,  the  Rus- 
sians seem  to  have  reached  the  conclusion  that  it  would  not 
be  worth  while  even  to  attempt  carrying  the  trenches  by  as- 


THE  SURRENDER  OF  PRZEMYSL  99 

sault.  Indeed,  in  the  opinion  of  the  writer,  neither  the 
Russians  nor  any  other  troops  ever  could  have  taken  them 
with  the  bayonet ;  the  only  method  possible  would  have  been 
the  slow  and  patient  methods  of  sapping  and  mining  which 
was  used  by  the  Japanese  at  Port  Arthur.  But  methods 
so  costly,  both  in  time  and  lives,  would  seem  to  have  been 
hardly  justified  here  because,  as  the  Russians  well  knew,  it 
was  merely  a  question  of  time  before  the  encircled"  garrison 
would  eat  itself  up,  and  the  whole  position  would  then  fall 
into  their  hands  without  the  cost  of  a  single  life. 

The  strategic  value  of  Przemysl  itself  was  in  no  way 
acutely  delaying  the  Russian  campaigns  elsewhere,  and 
they  could  afford  to  let  the  Austrian  General  who  shut  him- 
self and  a  huge  army  up  in  Przemysl,  play  their  own  game 
for  them,  which  is  exactly  what  happened.  There  was  no 
such  situation  here  as  at  Port  Arthur,  where  the  menace  of 
a  fleet  in  being  locked  up  in  the  harbor  necessitated  the  cap- 
ture of  the  Far  Eastern  stronghold  before  the  Russian  sec- 
ond fleet  could  appear  on  the  scene  and  join  forces  with  it. 
Nor  was  there  even  any  such  important  factor  as  that  which 
confronted  the  Germans  at  Liege.  To  the  amateur  it  seems 
then  that  the  Austrians,  with  eyes  open,  isolated  a  force 
which  at  the  start  must  have  numbered  nearly  four  army 
corps,  in  a  position  upon  which  their  program  was  not 
dependent,  and  under  conditions  which  made  its  eventual 
capture  a  matter  of  absolute  certainty  providing  only  that 
the  siege  was  not  relieved  from  without  by  their  own  armies 
from  the  South. 

Between  the  outer  line  of  forts  and  the  Wiar  River  are 
a  number  of  improvised  field  works,  all  of  which  looked  as 
though  they  could  stand  a  good  bit  of  taking,  but  of  course 
they  were  not  as  elaborate  as  the  first  line.  The  railroad 
crosses  the  little  Wiar  on  a  steel  bridge,  but  the  bridge  now 
lies  a  tangle  of  steel  girders  in  the  river.  It  is  quite  obvi- 
ous that  the  Austrian  commander  destroyed  his  bridges 
west  of  the  town  because  they  afforded  direct  communica- 
tions with  the  lines  beyond ;  but  the  bridge  over  the  Wiar 
has  no  military  value  whatsoever,  the  others  being  gone, 
save  to  give   convenient   all  rail  access  to   the   heart   of 


ioo         THE  SURRENDER  OF  PRZEMYSL 

Przemysl  itself.    The  town  was  given  up  the  next  day  and, 
as  the  natural  consequence  of  the  Austrian  commander's 
conception  of  his  duty,  all  food  supplies  had  to  be  removed 
from  the  railway  trucks  at  the  bridge,  loaded  into  wagons, 
and  make  the  rest  of  the  journey  into  the  town  in  that  way, 
resulting  in  an  absolutely  unnecessary  delay  in  relieving 
the  wants  of  the  half-famished  garrison  within.     The  only 
bright  spot  that  this  action  presents  to  the  unprejudiced 
observer  is  that  it  necessitated  the  dainty,  carefully-shod 
Austrian  officers  walking  three  kilometers  through  the  mud 
before  they  could  embark  on  the  trains  to  take  them  to  the 
points  of  detention  for  prisoners  in  Russia.     There  cannot 
be  the  slightest  doubt  that  the  rank  and  file  of  the  garrison 
were  actually  on  the  verge  of  starvation,  and  that  the  ci- 
vilian population  were  not  far  from  the  same  fate.    As  near 
as  one  can  learn  the  latter  consisted  of  about  40,000  persons. 
I  am  told  that  the  prisoners  numbered   131,000  men  and 
some  3,600  officers,  and  that  perhaps  20,000  have  died  dur- 
ing the  siege  from  wounds  and  disease.    This,  then,  makes 
a  population  at  the  beginning  of  nearly  200,000  in  a  fortifi- 
cation which,  as  experts  say,  could  have  easily  been  held  by 
50,000  troops.     One  officer  even  went  so  far  as  to  declare 
that  in  view  of  the  wonderful  defensive  capacity  of  the  po- 
sition, 30,000  might  have  made  a  desperate  stand.    The  for- 
tress was  thus  easily  three  times  overgarrisoned.     In  other 
words,  there  were  perhaps  at  the  start  150,000  mouths  to 
feed  in  the  army  alone,  when  50,000  men  would  have  been 
able  to  hold  the  position.    This  alone  made  the  approach  of 
starvation  sure  and  swift.    The  fact  that  in  this  number  of 
men  there  were  3,600  officers,  nine  of  the  rank  of  General, 
indicates  pretty  clearly  the  extent  to  which  the  garrison 
was  overofficered.     Kusmanek,  the  commander  of  the  for- 
tress, is  said  to  have  had  seventy-five  officers  on  his  per- 
sonal staff"  alone. 

As  far  as  one  can  learn  there  was  no  particular  pinch  in 
the  town  until  everything  was  nearly  gone,  and  then  condi- 
tions became  suddenly  acute.  It  is  improbable  that  econ- 
omy was  enforced  in  the  early  dispensing  of  food  supplies, 
and  the  husbanding  of  such  resources  as  were  at  hand. 


THE  SURRENDER  OF  PRZEMYSL         101 

When  the  crisis  came,  it  fell  first  upon  the  unfortunate  sol- 
diers, with  whom  their  officers  seem  to  have  little  in  com- 
mon. Transport  horses  were  killed  first,  and  then  the  cav- 
alry mounts  went  to  the  slaughter  house  to  provide  for  the 
garrison.  The  civilians  next  felt  the  pinch  of  hunger,  and 
every  live  thing  that  could  nourish  the  human  body  was 
eaten.  Cats,  I  am  told,  were  selling  at  ten  kr.  each  and 
fair-sized  dogs  at  twenty-five  kr.  The  extraordinary  part 
of  the  story  is  that  according  to  evidence  collected  from 
many  sources  the  officers  never  even  changed  their  standards 
of  living.  While  the  troops  were  literally  starving  in  the 
trenches,  the  dilettantes  from  Vienna,  who  were  in  com- 
mand, were  taking  life  easily  in  the  Cafe  Sieber  and  the 
Cafe  Elite.  Three  meals  a  day,  fresh  meat,  wines,  ciga- 
rettes and  fine  cigars  were  served  to  them  up  to  the  last. 

One  of  the  haggard  starved-looking  servants  in  the  hotel 
where  I  was  quartered  told  me  that  several  of  the  staff  offi- 
cers lived  at  the  hotel.  "They,"  he  said,  "had  everything 
as  usual.  Fresh  meat  and  all  the  luxuries  were  at  their  dis- 
posal until  the  last.  Yet  their  soldier  servant  used  to  come 
to  me,  and  one  day  when  I  gave  him  half  of  a  bit  of  bread 
I  was  eating,  his  hands  trembled  as  he  reached  to  take  it 
from  me."  My  informant  paused  and  then  concluded  sar- 
donically, "No,  the  officers  did  not  suffer.  Not  they.  It 
was  cafes,  billiards,  dinners  and  an  easy  life  for  them  to 
the  end.  But  the  rest  of  us.  Ah,  yes,  we  have  suffered. 
Had  the  siege  lasted  another  week  we  should  all  have  been 
black  in  the  face  for  want  of  food." 

An  Austrian  sister  who  had  been  working  in  the  hos- 
pital confirmed  the  story.  "Is  it  true  that  people  were  starv- 
ing here?"  I  asked  her.  "Indeed,  it  is  true,"  she  told  me, 
"the  soldiers  had  almost  nothing  and  the  civilians  were  little 
better  off.  As  for  us  in  the  hospitals — well,  we  really  suf- 
fered for  want  of  food."  "But  how  about  the  officers?" 
I  asked.  She  looked  at  me  sharply  out  of  the  corner  of  her 
eyes,  for  she  evidently  did  not  care  to  criticize  her  own  peo- 
ple, but  she  seemed  to  recall  something  and  her  face  sud- 
denly hardened  as  she  snapped  out:  "The  officers  starve? 
Well,  hardly.     They  lived  like  dukes  always."     More  she 


102         THE  SURRENDER  OF  PRZEMYSL 

would  not  say,  but  the  evidence  of  these  two  was  amply  con- 
firmed by  the  sight  of  the  sleek,  well-groomed  specimens 
of  the  "dukes"  that  promenade  the  streets.  While  the  sol- 
diers were  in  a  desperate  plight  for  meat,  the  officers  seemed 
to  have  retained  their  own  thoroughbred  riding  horses  until 
the  last  day.  I  suppose  that  riding  was  a  necessity  to  them 
to  keep  in  good  health.  The  day  before  the  surrender  they 
gave  these  up,  and  2,000  beautiful  horses  were  killed,  not 
for  meat  for  the  starving  soldiers  be  it  noted,  but  that  they 
might  not  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  Russians.  Perhaps  I 
can  best  illustrate  what  happened  by  quoting  the  words  oi 
a  Russian  officer  who  was  among  the  first  to  enter  the  town. 
"Everywhere,"  he  told  me,  "one  saw  the  bodies  of  freshly- 
killed  saddle  horses,  some  of  them  animals  that  must  have 
been  worth  many  thousand  roubles.  Around  the  bodies 
were  groups  of  Hungarian  soldiers  tearing  at  them  with 
knives;  with  hands  and  faces  dripping  with  blood,  they  were 
gorging  themselves  on  the  raw  meat.  I  have  never  seen  in 
all  my  experience  of  war  a  more  horrible  and  pitiable  spec- 
tacle than  these  soldiers,  half  crazed  with  hunger,  tearing 
the  carcasses  like  famished  wolves."  My  friend  paused  and 
a  shadow  crossed  his  kindly  face.  "Yes,"  he  said,  "it  was 
horrible.  Even  my  Cossack  orderly  wept — and  he — well,  he 
has  seen  much  of  war  and  is  not  overdelicate." 

I  can  quote  the  statement  of  the  Countess  Elizabeth 
Schouvalov  as  further  corroborative  evidence  of  conditions 
existing  in  the  town.  The  Countess,  who  is  in  charge  of  a 
distribution  station  to  relieve  the  wants  of  the  civil  popula- 
tion, said  to  me :  "It  is  true  that  the  people  were  starving. 
Common  soldiers  occasionally  fell  down  in  the  street  from 
sheer  weakness  for  want  of  food.  Some  lay  like  the  dead 
and  would  not  move.  But  their  officers !"  A  frown  passed 
over  her  handsome  features.  "Ah!"  she  said,  "they  are  not 
like  the  Russians.  Our  officers  share  the  hardships  of  the 
men.  You  have  seen  it  yourself,"  with  a  glance  at  me, 
"you  know  that  one  finds  them  in  the  trenches,  everywhere 
in  uniforms  as  dirty  as  their  soldiers,  and  living  on  almost 
the  same  rations.  A  Russian  would  never  live  in  ease  while 
his  men  starved.    I  am  proud  of  my  people.    But  these  offi- 


THE  SURRENDER  OF  PRZEMYSL         103 

cers  here — they  care  nothing  for  their  men.  You  have 
seen  them  in  the  streets.  Do  they  look  as  though  they  had 
suffered?"  and  she  laughed  bitterly. 

Immediately  on  reaching  the  town  we  sought  out  the 
headquarters  of  the  new  Russian  Commandant  of  the  for- 
tress. Over  the  door  of  the  building,  in  large  gold  letters, 
were  words  indicating  that  the  place  had  formerly  been  the 
headquarters  of  the  10th  Austrian  Army  Corps.  At  the  en- 
trance two  stolid  Russian  sentries  eyed  gloomily  the  con- 
stant line  of  dapper  Austrian  officers  that  passed  in  and  out, 
and  who  were,  as  we  subsequently  learned,  assisting  the 
Russians  in  their  task  of  taking  over  the  city.  General  Arti- 
monov,  the  new  governor,  received  us  at  once  in  the  room 
that  had  been  vacated  only  a  few  days  before  by  his  Aus- 
trian predecessor,  General  Kusmanek.  On  the  wall  hung  a 
great  picture  of  the  Austrian  Emperor.  The  General  placed 
an  officer,  Captain  Stubatitch,  at  our  disposal,  and  with  him 
our  way  was  made  comparatively  easy.  From  him  and 
other  officers  whom  we  met,  we  gathered  that  the  Russians 
were  utterly  taken  by  surprise  at  the  sudden  fall  of  the 
fortress,  and  dumbfounded  at  the  strength  of  the  garrison, 
which  none  believed  would  exceed  the  numbers  of  the 
Russians  investing  them;  the  general  idea  being  that  there 
were  not  over  50,000  soldiers  at  the  disposal  of  the  Austrian 
commander. 

Three  days  before  the  fall  a  sortie  was  made  by  some 
30,000  Hungarian  troops.  Why  out  of  130,000  men  only 
30,000  were  allotted  to  this  task  in  such  a  crisis  does  not 
appear.  Neither  has  any  one  been  able  to  explain  why, 
when  they  did  start  on  their  ill-fated  excursion,  they  made 
the  attempt  in  the  direction  of  Lwow  rather  than  to  the 
south,  in  which  direction,  not  so  very  far  away,  the  armies 
of  Austria  were  struggling  to  reach  them.  Another  remark- 
able feature  of  the  last  sorties  was,  that  the  troops  went  to 
the  attack  in  their  heavy  marching  kit.  Probably  not  even 
the  Austrians  themselves  felt  any  surprise  that  such  a  half- 
hearted and  badly  organized  undertaking  failed  with  a  loss 
of  3,500  in  casualties  and  as  many  more  taken  prisoners. 
One  does  not  know  how  these  matters  are  regarded  in  Aus- 


104         THE  SURRENDER  OF  PRZEMYSL 

tria,  but  to  the  laymen  it  would  seem  that  some  one  should 
have  a  lot  of  explaining  to  do  as  to  the  last  days  of  this  siege. 
The  fall  of  Przemysl  strikes  one  as  being  the  rarest 
thing  possible  in  war — namely,  a  defeat,  which  seems  to 
please  all  parties  interested.  The  Russians  rejoice  in  a 
fortress  captured,  the  Austrians  at  a  chance  to  eat  and  rest, 
and  the  civilians,  long  since  sick  of  the  quarrel,  at  their  city 
once  more  being  restored  to  the  normal. 

DIARY  OF  A  CAPTURED  RUSSIAN  OFFICER  IN  PRZEMYSL 

March  15th. 

Severe  frosts  have  set  in.  The  cold  is  terrible.  Food  is 
getting  scarcer  and  scarcer.  The  dinner  ration  is  getting 
very  small.  The  soldiers'  dinner  consists  of  a  little  white 
beet-root  (cattle  food)  with  a  mixture  of  some  sort  of  acid 
stuff. 

March  17th. 

Four  days  ago  they  requisitioned  the  cows  of  all  the 
inhabitants,  in  spite  of  the  beseeching  and  crying  of  the 
women  and  children.  The  servants  and  orderlies  have  been 
warned  that  bread  will  be  issued  to-morrow  for  the  last 
time.  The  day  after  to-morrow  one  ration  for  every  four. 
Our  wretched  orderly  imagines  that  by  washing  his  stomach 
with  hot  water  now  and  then  during  the  day  he  loses  the 
wish  to  eat. 

The  Sisters  of  Mercy  tell  us  that  in  the  city  they  openly 
talk  of  the  speedy  surrender  of  the  fortress.  The  Austrian 
administration  have  told  us  that  we  must  have  money  to 
hand  over  on  deposit.  This,  if  you  please,  on  the  eve  of  sur- 
render !  Absurd !  We  have  all  agreed  not  to  hand  over  a 
penny.  All  day  yesterday  the  artillery  crashed  from  the 
forts.  They  say  that  in  two  directions  from  the  fortress 
a  force  of  70,000  men  this  morning  advanced  to  try  and 
break  through  towards  the  Carpathians.  To-day  all  forts 
and  bridges  are  to  be  blown  up.  There  remain  in  the  for- 
tress 40,000  soldiers  incapable  of  fighting.  Medicines  also 
have  run  out.  For  a  long  time  there  has  been  no  soap  or 
vaseline.  Iodine  for  a  couple  of  days  only  is  left.  The 
wounded  even  are  not  getting  bread  now ;  they  are  giving 


THE  SURRENDER  OF  PRZEMYSL         105 

them  the  last  of  the  biscuits.     The  Austrian  officers  are 
already  arranging  and  packing  for  the  journey  into  Russia. 

During  the  whole  of  to-night  uninterrupted  heavy  ar- 
tillery fire  has  been  going  on;  all  night  long  rockets  have 
been  lighting  everything  up  from  the  forts.  The  Russians 
this  morning  began  the  bombardment  of  the  town.  Two 
shells  burst  close  to  the  hospital;  the  windows  were  blown 
to  bits.    To-day  we  had  no  bread. 

March  21st. 

To-day  is  the  third  day  we  have  had  no  bread.  Our 
Mother  Superior  sold  a  cow  for  £140  and  a  three-day-old 
calf  for  £12  10s.  A  dog  costs  £2  10s.  The  recent  gloomy 
weather  has  changed  to  sunny.  The  snow  has  thawed  al- 
ready. The  River  San  is  free  of  ice.  They  say  the  Aus- 
trians  have  burned  twenty-one  millions  worth  of  paper 
money,  four  aeroplanes,  and  have  destroyed  as  far  as  pos- 
sible all  stores  and  carriages.  They  have  thrown  the  guns 
into  the  San  River.  Just  before  turning  in  they  warned  us 
that  the  forts  and  bridges  in  the  town  would  be  blown  up 
at  four  in  the  morning. 

March  22nd. 

The  fortress  is  surrendering.  The  artillery  fired  up  to 
5  a.  m.  At  5.30  a.  m.  explosions  were  heard,  at  first  sep- 
arately, but  later  a  regular  hell  was  let  loose.  We  opened 
the  windows  so  that  they  should  not  be  broken.  The  sun 
had  already  risen,  and  the  plumes  of  smoke,  lit  up  by  the 
sun,  presented  a  beautiful  scene.  The  thunder  and  crash 
of  the  explosions  went  on  uninterruptedly.  It  was  impos- 
sible to  get  near  a  window ;  one  was  flung  backwards.  The 
panic  had  become  terrible.  At  every  explosion  the  doors 
were  blown  open.  Bridges,  powder  magazines,  stores, 
everything  was  blown  up  in  two  hours.  The  Ruthenes  were 
overjoyed  at  the  Russian  victory.  We  could  no  longer  re- 
main in  the  hospital,  and  for  the  first  time  we  went  out  into 
the  streets.  Our  soldiers  were  embracing  the  Austrian  sol- 
diers. In  one  place  a  ring  had  been  formed,  and  our  cav- 
alrymen were  dancing  with  the  Ruthene  women.  All  the 
footpaths  were  thronged  with  people. 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES 


RUSSIA  REACHES  THE  PEAK  OF  HER  SUCCESS  AGAINST 

AUSTRIA 

MARCH   23RD-APRIL   l6TH 


COUNT  DE  SOUZA 
GRAND  DUKE  NICHOLAS 


OCTAVIAN  TASLAUANU 
MAJOR  MORAHT 


The  "Battle  of  the  Passes"  must  have  been  one  of  the  most  agoniz- 
ing, as  it  was  one  of  the  most  long  continued,  efforts  of  human  en- 
durance throughout  the  War.  Any  dates  given  to  this  strange  battle 
must  necessarily  be  vague,  as  it  really  began  in  November  of  1914 
and  continued  every  day  through  the  long  winter;  but  it  reached 
its  peak  of  violence  and  of  Russian  success  in  April  of  1915.  The 
Russian  Commander-in-Chief,  the  Czar's  uncle,  Grand  Duke  Nicholas, 
in  his  official  announcement  here  given,  sets  dates  to  the  main  struggle 
as  extending  from  March  23rd  to  April  16th.  But  the  Austrian 
officer,  Taslauanu,  whose  frank  record  we  also  present,  found  himself 
before  the  end  of  November  with  only  five  soldiers  remaining  out  of 
over  250. 

This  long  and  terribly  costly  battle  was  fought  for  possession  of 
the  Carpathian  Mountains,  or  rather  of  the  passes  which  led  over  them, 
the  mountains  being  so  desperately  contested  not  for  themselves, 
but  because  they  were  the  key  to  Hungary  and  indeed  to  the  whole 
Austrian  Empire,  of  which  Hungary  was  the  main  protector.  The  Rus- 
sian Duke  had  visions,  mistaken  visions,  of  winning  the  War  in  that 
one  great  effort.  But  that  long  struggle  amid  winter  storms,  often 
at  icy  heights  above  ten  thousand  feet,  was  beyond  even  Russian 
endurance.  The  proud  tone  of  the  Grand  Duke's  statement  of  his 
soldiers'  spirit  contrasts  strikingly  with  the  mood  of  both  Russian 
and  Austrian  common  soldiers  as  pictured  by  Taslauanu.  The  latter 
was  a  young  officer  from  Fagaras,  a  Rumanian  district  then  part  of 
the  Austrian  domains.  His  lukewarm  obedience  to  Austrian  com- 
mand and  his  ready  resentment  against  his  Hungarian  associates  are 
typical  of  the  difficulties  the  Austrian  generals  had  to  surmount.  It 
is  a  strange  fantasia  of  fighting  that  he  presents  in  his  book,  "With  the 
Austrians  in  Galicia."  Would  that  we  had  more  such  glimpses  into 
the  realities  of  the  eastern  War! 

To  these  two  antagonistic  pictures  by  eye-witnesses  of  the  Carpa- 
thian battle,  we  prefix  a  general  review  of  its  strategic  importance  by 
the  great  French  critic,  De  Souza;  and  to  it  all. we  add  a  summariz- 
ing of  the  final  situation  by  the  noted  German  critic,  Moraht.  The 
latter  seems,  however,  to  have  been  overhopeful.  Despite  his  confi- 
dence in  the  Austrians,  they  were  very  definitely  beaten.  The  ex- 
hausted  Russians   needed   only  a  brief   respite   after   mid-April,   and 

106 


LAS 


■ 


f^'. 


|M 


i 


t  of 


. 


iter 


|he  Wirier-long  Battle  for  the 

CarpathiahV 

A  Russian  Cossack  Division  re- 
pulsed by  the  Hungarians 


Painting  hy  the  leadet  of  the 

of  Ait,  Anton  Hcumsnrr 

n  by 


■v* 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES  107 

there  would  have  been  little  to  bar  them  from  a  swift  rush  across  the 
Hungarian  plain,  had  not  the  tremendous  German  triumph  on  the 
Dunajec  ensued  upon  May  1st.  It  snapped  the  cord  of  Russian  vic- 
tory in  an  instant  by  separating  the  army  in  the  Carpathians  from 
its  essential  line  of  supplies.  The  weight  of  the  battle  of  the  Dunajec 
outweighed  a  hundredfold  even  that  of  the  great  "Battle  of  the  Passes." 


BY  COUNT  DE  SOUZA 

WHILST  the  Russians,  with  limited  means,  were  try- 
ing to  oppose  and  defeat  the  German  attacks  in  Po- 
land, the  Grand  Duke,  with  his  main  forces,  was  venturing 
upon  a  move  which  was  meant  to  be  the  finishing  stroke  of 
the  war. 

The  primary  object  of  this  move  was  the  capture  of  the 
Carpathians,  the  great  range  of  mountains  which  separates 
Galicia  from  the  Magyar  plains.  This  range  constituted 
the  strongest  position  or  barrier  on  the  Teutonic  front,  and 
the  Grand  Duke  and  those  of  his  staff  who  shared  and 
supported  his  views  calculated  that  once  they  were  in  pos- 
session of  it  they  could  deal  more  easily  and  at  leisure  with 
their  foes. 

With  such  a  pivot  in  their  possession,  the  Russians, 
it  was  said,  could  maneuver  at  ease,  and  take  Germany  in 
flank  from  the  south;  Hungary  would  be  at  their  mercy; 
the  Serbs  would  be  definitely  relieved;  and,  finally,  Aus- 
tria would  be  forced  from  the  list  and  compelled  to  sue  for 
a  separate  peace.  Thus  Germany  would  have  been  left  to 
face  the  Triple  Entente  alone.  The  view  seemed  sound  and 
it  had  some  factors  to  recommend  it.  The  peculiar  po- 
sition of  two  neutral  nations  at  the  time,  who  were  neigh- 
bors to  the  Dual  Monarchy,  was  a  particular  inducement 
for  Russia  to  act  in  the  way  she  did;  and  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  had  everything  turned  out  in  the  political  sphere 
as  the  Grand  Duke  hoped  and  expected,  there  is  no  saying 
what  success  he  might  have  achieved.  Unfortunately,  the 
military  disadvantages  of  the  enterprise  as  regards  the 
threatening  spirit  and  strength  of  the  Germans,  outweighed 
appreciably  its  political  prospects.  One  may  take  for 
granted  of  course  that  the  Grand  Duke  and  his  staff  did 
weigh  and  consider  everything,  except  perhaps  one  factor 


io8  THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES 

which  in  spite  of  their  previous  experiences,  they  seemed  to 
have  left  out  of  their  reckoning — the  talent  of  the  leaders 
of  the  opposite  camp  and  the  latter's  facilities  for  rapid 
mobilization  and  concentration.  These  leaders,  however, 
had  been  thwarted ;  and  they  had  been  repulsed  twice  from 
Poland.  This  made  the  Grand  Duke  overconfident  and 
led  him  to  plunge  deeper  and  deeper  into  his  bold  and  dar- 
ing movement. 

When  he  considered  that  his  position  was  secure  in  Po- 
land, he  proceeded  to  a  vast  concentration  in  Southern  and 
Western  Galicia,  the  movement  starting  almost  as  soon  as 
the  Austrians,  after  their  unsuccessful  attempt  to  relieve 
Przemysl,  were  definitely  checked  on  the  San;  and  thus 
synchronizing,  practically,  with  Hindenburg's  second  at- 
tempt in  Poland.  The  3rd  Army,  under  Plehve,  pushed 
across  the  Vistula,  the  Biala,  and  the  Dunajec,  towards  Cra- 
cow (December  ist-6th).  The  2nd,  under  Dmitrieff,  in- 
vaded North  Hungary  almost  as  far  as  Barf  eld;  whilst  the 
8th  Army  advanced  frontally  against  the  range  itself,  and 
the  9th  acted  towards  Bukovina,  along  the  Dniester  and 
the  Pruth,  to  protect  the  Russian  communications  from  that 
direction.  Behind  all  these  forces  yet  another  army,  which 
was  concentrated  in  that  quarter,  laid  siege  to  Przemysl. 
This  was  the  7th  Army,  under  General  Selivanoff. 

It  was  then,  and  after  their  second  failure  in  Poland, 
that  the  Germans  redrew  entirely  their  plans  in  regard  to 
Russia ;  these  to  be  well  grasped  must  be  approached  from 
the  standpoint  of  outside  events. 

At  that  stage  the  great  German  offensive  in  the  West 
had  come  to  an  end;  the  German  armies  in  France  and 
Flanders  stood  on  the  defense  on  fortified  ground,  their  lo- 
cal needs  being  reduced  to  a  minimum.  Turkey  had  joined 
the  Central  Empires,  and  it  was  calculated  that  the  Allies 
would  thereby  be  appreciably  weakened  on  their  main 
fronts.  The  Kaiser's  generals  thought  that  without  too 
many  misgivings  they  could  center,  at  least  momentarily, 
their  attentions  on  Russia,  and  endeavor  to  defeat  her,  to 
crush  her,  to  sever  her  from  her  alliances  and  thus  remove 
her  from  the  field  of  combat,  which  would  pave  the  way  for 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES  109 

another  onslaught  against  France  or  else  lead  to  the  new 
conditions  of  peace  that  Germany,  baffled  but  not  crushed, 
was  striving  for.  For  she  was  unaware  of  the  stringent 
policy  of  man-economy  that  France  had  deliberately  and 
wisely  entered  into,  and  she  interpreted  Joffre's  refusal  to 
attack  as  a  sign  of  weakness  and  exhaustion. 

The  disposition  of  the  Russian  forces  such  as  it  has 
been  shown,  and  which  was  entailed  by  the  Grand  Duke's 
scheme,  greatly  favored  Germany,  for  it  left  her  free  to 
manipulate  at  ease  her  own  line,  and  to  prepare  behind  that 
line  any  counter-move  that  she  would  wish  to  attempt. 
The  Russians,  as  yet,  were  not  too  numerous,  and  besides, 
attacked  by  the  Turks,  they  were  entering  in  a  remote  re- 
gion (the  Caucasus)  into  a  fresh  campaign,  which  would 
naturally  absorb  some  of  their  reserves  and  new  forma- 
tions, and  their  surplus  strength.  But  the  best  prospects 
for  Germany  lay  on  the  Carpathians;  for  the  assailants 
could  be  nailed  there  and  made  to  pay  the  full  toll  of  any 
gains;  then,  afterwards,  Russia  would  be  too  weak  to  stand 
the  accumulated  strength  of  her  opponents.  Herein  lies  the 
key  to  the  great  Teuton  offensive  of  191 5,  and  to  the  mys- 
terious and  apparently  aimless  German  and  Austrian  moves 
which  preceded  it. 

Needless  to  say,  as  the  right  view  of  events  was  not 
taken  all  these  moves  were  misinterpreted,  and  thereby  Ger- 
many, although  she  finally  failed,  reaped  nevertheless  the 
major  profits  of  her  undertaking;  for  she  succeeded  once 
more  in  blinding  the  world  as  to  the  results  she  achieved 
and  as  to  her  true  position,  and  she  succeeded  in  drawing 
on  to  her  side  yet  another  well-armed  and  powerful  neutral 
State — Bulgaria. 

The  battle  of  the  Carpathians  constituted  on  her  part 
a  delaying  action ;  and  not  as  was  supposed  and  believed,  an 
attempt  to  relieve  Przemysl;  in  the  same  way  the  fresh  of- 
fensives which  she  carried  out  in  the  spring,  in  Courland, 
Suwalki,  North  Poland,  and  in  Bukovina,  were  not  real 
attacks,  but  false  ones,  which  were  designed  to  mislead  the 
Russians.  Finally,  the  eventual  defeat  of  the  latter  was 
due  to  faulty  distribution  and  unsound  strategy;  and  not 


no  THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES 

to  lack  of  means  or  shortage  of  materials;  so  it  can  be  taken 
for  granted  that  Russia  lost  the  campaign  directly  she  em- 
barked on  the  conquest  of  the  Carpathians. 

This  operation,  the  most  tremendous  of  the  kind  which 
has  ever  been  undertaken,  imposed  on  the  Grand  Duke  de- 
mands and  sacrifices  which  prevented  him  from  keeping 
himself  at  full  strength  elsewhere;  and  which,  in  the  end, 
practically  exhausted  his  forces.  Yet,  as  we  shall  see,  the 
Grand  Duke,  at  the  crucial  moment,  acquired  a  sufficiency 
of  troops  and  material  to  make  good  his  position,  and  to 
hold  his  gains.  He  failed  to  make  proper  use  of  them ;  and 
this  is  the  true  cause  of  Russia's  disappointment. 

The  capture  of  the  Carpathians  in  itself,  however,  was 
a  brilliant  feat  of  arms  of  which  the  Russian  armies  and 
their  leaders,  and  especially  General  Ivanof,  who  devised 
the  operation,  could  well  be  proud.  It  was  a  triumph  in 
tactics  and  it  displayed  to  the  full  the  qualities  of  dogged- 
ness  and  endurance  for  which  the  Muscovite  soldier  is 
famous.  In  the  teeth  of  a  most  formidable  and  desperate 
opposition  they  overcame  all  difficulties.  They  fought  in 
the  snow-clad  peaks  with  an  unconcern  and  an  ease  which 
astonished  their  opponents;  they  charged  up  steep  rocky 
inclines  and  dislodged  the  well  entrenched  defenders  from 
strong  and  thoroughly  prepared  positions;  they  defeated  all 
counter-attacks,  and  by  the  end  of  March  they  were  masters 
of  the  Carpathians.  The  Duklow  pass,  the  Luchow  pass, 
the  Rosztoki  pass  were  in  their  hands  and  sotnias  of  Cos- 
sacks, pushing  forward,  sallied  into  the  Hungarian  plains, 
and  filled  with  consternation  the  apprehensive  population 
who  fled  in  thousands  in  anticipation  of  the  Muscovite  in- 
vasion. The  number  of  prisoners  made  by  the  victors  in 
that  operation  was  estimated  at  80,000.  About  this  time 
(March  22nd)  Przemysl  fell,  the  victors  capturing  there  a 
whole  army  (130,000  men),  and  an  immense  booty;  and 
thus  Russia  then  looked  truly  irresistible  and  triumphant. 
The  world,  which  was  always  prone  to  look  away  from  the 
main  quarter  of  the  struggle,  was  ready  and  eager  to  hand 
over  to  the  Grand  Duke  the  palm  of  victory — and  there  is 
absolutely  no  doubt  that  amongst  those  who  praised  and 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES  in 

glorified  his  action,  there  was  not  a  single  individual  who 
understood  the  position ;  and  who  therefore  had  an  inkling 
into  what  was  brewing. 

We  shall  see  more  fully  presently  the  favorable  effect  of 
the  Russian  undertaking  on  the  enemy's  plans ;  ere  now  it 
can  be  shown  that  far  from  fearing  the  result,  the  Germans 
did  what  they  could  to  egg  on  the  Russians  on  their  costly 
and  daring  enterprise.  They  took  advantage  of  the  neces- 
sity there  was  at  one  time  of  affording  tactical  help  to  the 
Austrians,  to  foster  the  belief  that  considerable  German 
forces  were  being  concentrated  in  Hungary,  behind  the 
Carpathian  range.  And  in  order  to  heighten  the  effect  of 
their  announcements  in  the  matter,  they  sent  two  generals 
of  some  notability,  Marwitz  and  Lisingen,  to  take  charge 
of  affairs  in  that  quarter.  No  one  in  the  opposite  camp  had 
then  a  doubt  that  full  German  army  corps  had  reen  forced 
the  Austrians;  and  it  was  owing  to  this  that  the  Grand 
Duke  took  so  seriously  the  enemy's  countermove  in  Buko- 
vina  and  the  occupation  of  the  Uszok  pass  by  a  small  Ger- 
man contingent.  And  whilst  the  Grand  Duke,  thinking  that 
the  enemy  was  going  to  make  an  effort — a  frontal  effort — 
to  reconquer  the  Carpathians,  kept  accumulating  troops  and 
material  in  that  direction,  the  Germans  were  actively  and 
feverishly  busy  with  their  secret  preparations,  behind  an- 
other sector  of  their  front. 

BY  OCTAVIAN  TASLAUANU 

November  16th. 
The  fighting  in  the  Carpathians,  thanks  to  the  difficul- 
ties of  the  ground  and  the  severity  of  the  season,  demanded 
the  greatest  effort  and  suffering  of  which  our  Army  was 
ever  capable.  Those  who  have  not  taken  part  in  it  can  have 
no  idea  of  what  a  human  being  is  capable.  The  resources 
of  vital  energy  accumulated  in  our  organism  are  simply 
prodigious.  In  particular,  our  Rumanian  soldiers  com- 
pelled the  admiration  of  all  by  their  fortitude.  This  qual- 
ity in  this  country  of  mountains  and  winter  made  them  first- 
rate  troops.  The  great  Napoleon  said :  "La  premiere 
qualite  du  soldat  est  la  Constance  a  supporter  la  fatigue  et 


ii2  THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES 

la  privation.     La  pauvrete,  les  privations  et  la  miser e  sont 
Creole  du  bon  soldat."  1 

You  can  bet  we  did  our  schooling  all  right,  even  going 
so  far  as  the  examinations,  and  if  the  bold  Corsican  had 
been  with  us  and  we  had  had  an  ideal  to  defend,  we  should 
certainly  have  been  reckoned  picked  troops  in  spite  of  our 
faults.  But  our  leaders  were  anything  but  Napoleons, 
though,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Major  of  the  22nd  Terri- 
torials rejoiced  in  the  name  of  Napoleon.  I  have  no  opin- 
ion about  his  military  ability,  as  I  was  never  close  to  him, 
but  I  never  heard  of  him  distinguishing  himself  in  any  ac- 
tion. 

November  17th. 

We  had  some  frightful  news  this  morning.  The  fight- 
ing Hungarian  Lieutenant  Szinte's  company  had  been  scat- 
tered, and  he  himself  had  bolted  at  top  speed,  thereby  crush- 
ing one  of  his  feet  and  taking  all  the  skin  off  his  nose. 
Michaelis,  the  bookseller,  had  gone  forward  with  fifty  men 
to  a  wooded  height.  A  few  men  of  my  company,  including 
Sergeant  Corusa,  told  me  that  they  saw  some  thirty  Rus- 
sians stealing  away  in  front  of  their  line.  They  began  to 
call  out,  "Feuer  einstellen — Tiizet  szilntes"  ("Cease  fire!"). 
At  this  double  command,  in  German  and  Hungarian, 
our  men  got  up  and  left  their  shelter  behind  the  trees.  Then 
the  Russians  were  heard  to  whisper:  "Brzo,  brzol" 
("Quick,  quick!"),  and  they  fired  rapidly  on  our  poor  sim- 
pletons and  then  bolted.  In  a  few  seconds  we  had 
only  dead  and  wounded  left,  for  hardly  fifteen  came  back 
untouched.  Poor  Michaelis,  hit  in  the  left  shoulder  by  a 
bullet  which  came  out  the  other  side,  was  killed  and  buried 
on  the  frontier.  A  Rumanian  stretcher-bearer  laid  him  on 
straw  at  the  bottom  of  a  trench  and  recited  a  paternoster 
over  him.  That  was  a  real  good  soul,  in  a  man  devoted  to 
his  duty.  God  rest  it.  His  brother,  the  engineer,  had  had 
his  forehead  scraped  by  a  bullet.  Two  other  officers  had 
been  seriously  wounded.    I  was  left  alone,  of  all  those  who 

1  The  highest  quality  of  a  soldier  is  constancy  in  endurance  of 
fatigue  and  privation.  Poverty,  privation  and  misery  are  the  school 
of  the  ?ood  soldier. 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES  113 

had  left  Fagaras  with  the  battalion.     Michaelis,  my  last 
companion,  had  just  left  me  for  ever. 

In  the  afternoon  I  took  fifty  men  to  hold  a  slope  cov- 
ered with  juniper  trees.  The  men  hastily  dug  trenches,  and 
I  manufactured  a  shelter  of  boughs  and  branches.  Once 
more  it  snowed,  and  there  was  no  question  of  making  fires. 

November  18th. 

Everything  was  wrapped  in  a  mantle  of  snow,  whose 
virginal  whiteness  soothed  us  and  made  our  thoughts  turn 
calmly  to  death,  which  we  longed  for  as  never  before.  The 
men  dug  coffin-shaped  trenches,  so  that  when  in  the  eve- 
ning I  went  to  inspect  them  lying  in  these  ditches  covered 
with  juniper,  they  looked  to  me  as  if  they  had  been  buried 
alive.     Poor  Rumanians! 

November  20th. 

An  unforgetable  day.  I  doubt  if  fiction  has  ever  re- 
corded scenes  more  comic,  and  yet  more  interesting,  than 
those  of  November  20th. 

First,  a  description  of  the  situation  is  necessary. 

We  were  holding  the  hills  between  the  road  from  Rado- 
szyce  in  Hungary  and  that  which  passes  through  Dolzyca 
to  the  frontier.  The  terrain  was  very  uneven  and  thickly 
wooded.  Here  and  there  a  clearing  or  meadow  could  be 
seen,  though  even^these  were  invaded  by  junipers.  The  line 
of  our  positions  was  prolonged  over  the  wooded  height  op- 
posite us,  so  that  we  had  to  fire  to  our  left  straight  through 
the  woods  without  seeing  anything.  The  reports  of  our  pa- 
trols did  not  enable  us  to  get  any  very  clear  idea  of  the  ex- 
tent of  our  front,  so  Major  Paternos  and  I  went  out  to 
confirm  their  news  from  the  spot. 

The  forest  began  in  face  of  us,  thirty  or  forty  paces 
down  the  slope.  We  made  our  way  into  it  and  reached  a 
stream.  On  the  other  side  of  the  stream  the  woods  be- 
came thicker,  and  we  could  get  up  the  slope  only  with  the 
assistance  of  projecting  tufts  and  branches.  Beyond  the 
top  we  found  a  battalion,  about  300  strong,  of  the  47th  In- 
fantry. They  had  all  gone  to  ground,  and  their  Captain 
showed  us,  thirty  paces  away,  the  crest  covered  with  juni- 
pers, and  told  us :    "The  Russians  are  there."    But  the  un- 

w.,  VOL.  III.— 8. 


114  THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES 

dergrowth  was  so  thick  that  nothing  could  be  seen  and  no 
one  could  get  through.  This  Captain  was  in  despair,  feel- 
ing that  he  had  no  chance  of  getting  away.  We  understood 
it.  His  situation  was  very  difficult.  We  shivered  even  as 
we  listened. 

Our  sector  was  broken  on  the  right,  but  on  our  left, 
three  hundred  paces  off,  the  next  sector  had  good  trenches, 
which  wound  round  in  a  bend  to  the  Dolzyca  road.  The 
gaps  were  due  to  our  lack  of  men. 

In  the  morning  the  12th  Company  was  on  duty.  Mine 
rested  in  shelters  in  the  woods,  and  we  were  served  out 
with  bread,  tinned  stuffs,  winter  underclothes,  boots — even 
children's  elastic  slippers — and  other  luxuries. 

The  men,  cold  or  no  cold,  lost  no  time  in  undressing  to 
change  their  linen.  I  then  saw  human  bodies  which  were 
nothing  but  one  great  sore  from  the  neck  to  the  waist.  They 
were  absolutely  eaten  up  with  lice.  For  the  first  time  I 
really  understood  the  popular  phrase,  "May  the  lice  eat 
you!"  One  of  the  men,  when  he  pulled  off  his  shirt,  tore 
away  crusts  of  dried  blood,  and  the  vermin  were  swarming 
in  filthy  layers  in  the  garment.  The  poor  peasant  had  grown 
thin  on  this.  His  projecting  jaws  and  sunken  eyes  were 
the  most  conspicuous  features  of  him.  Even  we  officers 
were  regular  hives.  Fothi  yesterday  counted  fifty.  He 
pulled  them  one  by  one  from  the  folds  of  his  shirt  collar. 
He  counted  them,  threw  them  in  the  fire,  and  while  we 
drank  our  tea  and  smoked,  we  scratched  ourselves  and 
laughed. 

About  midday  I  decided  to  change  also.  I  began  by 
washing,  for  I  was  filthy  and  black.  From  the  time  of  our 
arrival  at  Laszki-Murowane,  six  weeks  before,  I  had  not 
known  what  it  was  to  wash  my  mouth.  The  post  had 
brought  me  from  Hungary  a  toothbrush  and  some  paste. 
What  a  joy  once  more  to  have  white  teeth  and  a  clean 
mouth!  In  one's  daily  life  at  home  one  cannot  imagine 
that  such  pleasures  can  exist.  One  thing  at  least  war  teaches 
us — to  appreciate  as  never  before  the  pleasures  of  peace! 

I  had  just  put  on  my  shirts  again — I  always  wore  two 
or  three — when  I  heard  a  shout  from  all  sides :    "The  Rus- 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES  115 

sians  are  on  us !"  Private  Torna  came  to  our  shelter  to 
announce :  "Sir,  the  Russians  are  breaking  through  our 
line  on  the  top !"  I  did  not  yet  believe  it,  but,  at  any  cost, 
I  asked  my  friend  Fothi  to  conduct  the  company  to  the 
trenches.  Meanwhile  I  hastily  put  on  my  boots,  took  my 
rifle,  and  rejoined  the  company  as  it  was  emerging  from 
the  wood. 

There  I  stopped.  I  could  hardly  believe  my  eyes.  What 
was  it  I  saw  ?  Along  the  whole  front,  the  Russians  and  our 
men  were  in  contact,  staring  at,  threatening  (with  bayo- 
nets fixed),  shouting  at,  and,  in  places,  blazing  away  at  each 
other. 

Among  the  junipers,  near  to  the  trench  we  had  dug 
three  days  back,  the  Russians  and  our  men  were  scrambling 
together,  fighting  and  kicking,  around  a  supply  of  bread 
intended  for  the  12th  Company.  This  struggle  of  starving 
animals  for  food  only  lasted  a  few  seconds.  They  all  got 
up,  each  man  having  at  least  a  fragment  of  bread,  which 
he  devoured  voraciously. 

With  a  rapid  glance  I  counted  the  Russians.  They  were 
not  more  numerous  than  ourselves,  and  I  saw  them  drag 
our  men  away  one  by  one  by  pulling  at  the  corners  of  their 
blankets — for  our  shepherds  had  turned  their  blankets  into 
overcoats.  One  or  two  of  them,  a  little  more  knowing  than 
the  rest,  unfastened  these  coverings  and,  with  a  shake  of 
the  shoulders,  left  them  in  the  hands  of  the  Russians.  The 
latter,  well  content  with  their  prize,  went  their  way  laugh- 
ing, while  our  men  came  back  to  us.  I  thought  to  myself 
that,  after  all,  it  could  not  be  much  worse  in  Siberia  than 
it  was  here. 

Some  of  the  Russians  now  tried  to  surround  us.  One 
raw  young  recruit  came  quite  close  up  to  us  and  raised 
his  rifle  at  me.  I  held  mine  to  the  ready  in  response.  It 
was  a  thrilling  moment.  I  don't  know  what  it  was,  but 
something  in  my  look  prevented  him  from  firing,  and  I 
too  refrained.  He  took  to  his  heels  and  fled.  But  the 
shock  had  been  too  much  for  me,  and,  like  a  savage,  I  yelled 
in  a  fury :  "Disarm  them !"  I  threw  myself  on  to  the  group 
nearest  to  us,  and  Fothi  and  I  together  wrenched  the  rifles 


u6  THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES 

out  of  the  hands  of  the  two  Russian  soldiers.  They  all 
surrendered  forthwith  like  lambs.  We  took  sixty  of  them. 
All  our  men  wished  to  escort  the  prisoners.  I  selected  three 
as  a  guard,  the  third  to  walk  behind  and  carry  the  Rus- 
sian's rifle.  I  was  obliged  to  have  recourse  to  threats  be- 
fore I  could  induce  them  to  enter  the  trench,  and  I  then 
marched  them  off  in  file  to  the  Commander-in-Chief. 

And  this  is  how  bread,  holy  bread,  reconciles  men,  not 
only  in  the  form  of  Communion  before  the  holy  altar,  but 
even  on  the  field  of  battle.  The  peasants,  who,  in  their  own 
homes,  whether  in  Russia  or  elsewhere,  sweat  blood  in  order 
to  insure  the  ripening  of  the  golden  ear  of  corn  which  is  to 
feed  their  masters,  once  they  are  on  the  battlefield  forget 
the  behests  of  these  masters  who  have  sent  them  forth  to 
murder  their  fellows,  and  they  make  peace  over  a  scrap  of 
bread.  The  bread  which  they  have  produced  and  harvested 
makes  them  brothers.  After  this  scene  not  a  single  shot  dis- 
turbed the  forest,  and  those  who  had  been  able  to  preserve 
a  whole  loaf,  quickly  shared  it  brotherly  fashion  with  the 
prisoners,  the  latter  offering  them  tobacco  in  exchange.  All 
this,  of  course,  took  place  in  front  of  our  bivouacs  in  the 
heart  of  the  forest. 

I  sent  Fothi  to  the  Major  to  ask  for  reinforcements,  as 
I  was  expecting  a  second  attack.  The  prisoners  told  me 
that  the  Russians  had  come  about  four  hundred  strong.  I 
did  not  have  long  to  wait.  An  hour  later,  on  the  edge  of 
the  wood,  a  party  of  Russians  appeared.  They  were  stand- 
ing with  their  rifles  at  the  slope,  beckoning  to  us  to  ap- 
proach. One  of  our  men  left  his  party  and  came  to  tell  us 
that  the  Russians  wished  to  surrender,  but  that  we  ought  to 
surround  them.  It  was  no  doubt  a  fresh  ruse.  A  quarter 
of  an  hour  before  I  had  sent  out  a  patrol  of  two  men — a 
Rumanian  and  a  Saxon — and  they  had  not  returned.  The 
Rumanian  had  surrendered  and  the  Saxon  had  been  killed. 
My  reinforcements  arrived,  sixty  men  of  the  ioth  Com- 
pany, under  Second  Lieutenant  Szollosy,  the  man  who  was 
always  the  best  hand  at  cursing  and  belaboring  our  Ruma- 
nians. I  sent  his  sergeant-major,  a  brutal  and  thoroughly 
repellent  Saxon,  together  with  twenty  men,  to  the  right  to 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES  117 

surround  the  Russians.  I  certainly  doomed  them  to  death. 
I  reckoned  that  if  the  Russians  wished  to  surrender  they 
would  not  wait  for  us  to  surround  them  first.  They  would 
lay  down  their  arms  and  give  themselves  up.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  they  did  fire  on  our  men,  all  who  had  gone  out  to 
the  corner  of  the  forest  would  fall  victims.  But  calcula- 
tions are  all  very  fine;  on  the  field  of  battle  they  are  apt  to 
be  misleading. 

Surrender  was  the  last  thing  in  the  world  that  the  Rus- 
sians against  whom  our  men  were  advancing  with  fixed 
bayonets  had  in  mind.  I  went  over  the  top,  clambering 
over  the  body  of  a  man  whose  brains  were  sticking  out  of 
his  head,  and  signed  to  them  to  surrender — they  were  at 
most  200  yards  away.  But  they  still  continued  to  call  to  us 
without  attempting  to  move.  I  thereupon  gave  the  com- 
mand, "Fire!"  and  held  my  own  rifle  at  the  ready.  At  this 
point  my  calculations  broke  down.  My  Rumanians  refused 
to  fire,  and,  what  was  more,  prevented  me  from  firing  either. 
One  of  them  put  his  hand  on  my  rifle  and  said  : 

"Don't  fire,  sir;  if  we  fire,  they  will  fire  too.  And  why 
should  Rumanians  kill  Rumanians?"  (He  was  thinking  of 
the  Bessarabians.) 

I  accordingly  refrained,  but,  beside  myself  with  rage, 
tried  to>  rejoin  my  right  wing,  where  incredible  things  were 
happening.  The  schoolmaster  Catavei  and  Cizmas  barred 
my  way,  exclaiming :  "Stop,  don't  go  and  get  yourself  shot, 
too!" 

Our  men  were  advancing  towards  the  Russians,  and, 
with  their  arms  at  the  slope,  were  shaking  hands  with  them ; 
and  the  fraternizing  business  started  again. 

"Surrender,  and  we  will  surrender,  too.  We're  quite 
ready." 

Our  men  were  bringing  in  Russians,  and  vice  versa.  It 
was  a  touching  sight. 

I  saw  one  of  my  Rumanians,  towards  Saliste,  kiss  a 
Russian  and  bring  him  back.  Their  arms  were  round  each 
other's  necks  as  though  they  were  brothers.  They  were  old 
friends,  who  had  been  shepherd  boys  together  in  Bessarabia. 


n8  THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES 

We  took  ninety  Russians  as  prisoners  in  this  way;  whilst 
they  took  thirty  of  our  men. 

But  this  was  not  the  last  of  the  adventures  of  that  won- 
derful day. 

I  was  afraid  of  a  third  attack.  A  Moldavian  from  Bess- 
arabia, noticing  what  a  handful  we  were,  said  to  me:  "If 
we  had  known  there  were  so  few  of  you  we  should  have 
gone  for  you  with  sticks." 

I  again  applied  to  the  Major  for  reinforcements  and 
a  machine  gun.  As  it  happened,  he  had  just  called  up  a  com- 
pany of  the  96th  Infantry  Regiment;  they  arrived  almost 
immediately — 125  men,  under  Lieutenant  Petras — and 
went  to  lengthen  our  right  wing.  As  for  me,  the  Major  sent 
me  to  a  bank  on  the  left,  to  direct  two  machine  guns  where 
to  fire  in  order  to  cut  off  the  retreat  of  those  Russians  who 
had  remained  in  the  wood.  I  had  hardly  advanced  a  hun- 
dred yards  before  I  heard  a  shout  of  "Hurrah!"  in  my  sec- 
tor. I  called  out  to  the  Major  to  find  out  what  it  meant, 
and  went  on.  In  a  hollow  I  found  a  field  officer — unfortu- 
nately, I  have  forgotten  his  name — who  sent  a  lieutenant  to 
accompany  me  to  the  machine  guns.  But  it  was  a  Russian 
machine  gun  that  welcomed  us  as  soon  as  we  reached  the 
trenches.  The  bullets  whizzed  by,  thick  and  fast.  One 
grazed  my  leg,  another  came  within  a  hand's-breadth  of  my 
head.  The  Russians  employ  detachments  of  snipers,  who 
creep  into  advanced  positions  and  pick  off  officers  only. 
Major  Paternos  had  the  fingers  of  his  left  hand  shot  off  in 
his  observation  post.  They  are  wonderful  shots.  I  showed 
my  respect  for  them  by  not  leaving  the  trench  until  night- 
fall, when  I  returned  to  my  sector. 

Lieutenant  Petras  had  attacked  the  Russians  in  the 
wood.  That  was  the  meaning  of  the  cheers  I  had  heard, 
of  which  the  most  patent  result  was  the  reduction  of  the 
relieving  company  of  the  96ths  to  twenty-five  men.  Those 
who  had  entered  the  wood  never  returned,  and  had  cer- 
tainly fallen  a  prey  to  the  Russians. 

Once  again  I  had  escaped  the  dangers  of  that  fateful 
day,  which  the  Commander-in-Chief  assured  us,  in  a  special 
Army  Order,  would  be  inscribed  on  the  page  of  history. 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES  119 

Our  scrap  with  the  Russians  may  have  been  extremely 
comic,  but  at  least  we  had  held  our  positions — and  that 
alone  was  a  victory.  We  had  been  allotted  the  task  of 
keeping  the  crest,  from  which,  if  they  had  been  able  to 
seize  it,  the  Russians  would  have  threatened  our  line  in  the 
rear  and  on  the  flank;  and  we  had  fulfilled  it.  Major  Pa- 
ternos  told  us  to  draw  up  a  list  of  the  men  who  had  dis- 
tinguished themselves.  We  all  received  the  second-class 
medal  for  valor,  and  three  officers — Fothi,  Szollosy  and 
myself — were  also  awarded  the  Signum  Laudis  bar.  The 
Hungarian  deserved  it  perhaps  least  of  any  of  us.  He  was 
not  even  present  when  we  took  the  prisoners;  but  he  had 
the  impudence  to  go  to  the  Major  and  declare,  in  front  of 
us  all,  that  it  was  he  who  captured  the  first  Russian. 

We  marched  through  a  huge  forest  to  Hocra,  where 
the  Command  of  the  Twentieth  Division  was  stationed.  We 
only  got  there  late  at  night,  and  our  strength  had  dwindled 
to  a  quarter  of  what  we  had  at  the  start.  Our  little  Buda- 
pest gentlemen  had  littered  the  road  like  flies.  Many  of 
them  remained  behind  in  the  woods,  weeping,  and  no  one 
bothered  about  them.  Some  of  our  veterans  had  dropped 
behind,  too.  It  was  by  the  mercy  of  God  if  they  escaped 
the  frost  and  the  wolves. 

November  25th. 

All  these  villages  of  the  Galician  frontier  were  crammed 
with  Jewish  refugees  from  the  Galician  frontier.  We  found 
rooms  filled  by  thirty  to  forty  persons,  men,  women,  little 
girls,  children,  and,  of  course,  a  seasoning  of  soldiers,  all 
sleeping  together  in  a  heap.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  a 
more  complete  picture  of  misery. 

Our  numbers  were  so  seriously  reduced  that  we  were 
obliged  to  form  two  companies,  a  half-battalion,  the  last 
unit  which  preserved  its  individual  supply  arrangements, 
for  although  we  were  attached  to  the  1st  Regiment  of  Hon- 
veds,  we  were  messed  by  ourselves.  Here  my  company  was 
dissolved,  as  it  had  now  only  the  strength  of  a  platoon,  of 
which  I  was  still  the  Commander.  There  were  only  two 
officers  with  precedence  over  me,  and  both  of  these  were 
Hungarians — Szinte  and  Szollosy — so  that  in  spite  of  the 


120  THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES 

regret  of  my  men  and  the   indignation  of  many  of  my 
friends,  I  still  remained  a  subaltern. 

The  dispersion  of  my  company  was  the  last  straw.  I 
made  up  my  mind  to  say  good-by  to  battlefields,  as  I  was 
nothing  but  a  shadow  and  it  was  all  I  could  do  to  drag 
myself  along. 

November  27th. 

At  night  we  returned  to  Havaj.  We  left  early  for 
Stropka-Polena  in  a  thick  mist,  cold  and  penetrating. 
Marching  was  a  difficult  business,  for  the  men  were  worn 
out. 

At  Polena,  a  halt.  But  Austrian  bureaucracy  could  not 
even  leave  us  alone  in  the  field.  We  had  to  get  out  a  re- 
turn of  all  the  men's  belongings  which  were  missing,  and 
ever  would  be.  What  was  there  that  our  poor  fellows  did 
not  lack?  Everything  they  had  on  them  was  in  rags,  and 
filthy  beyond  words.  Lice  swarmed  over  them  like  bees  in  a 
hive.  Most  of  them  were  barefooted,  and  had  wrapped  up 
their  feet  in  rags  tied  round  their  tattered  socks.  The  feet 
of  many  were  terribly  torn  and  sore,  but  it  was  useless  for 
them  to  go  to  the  doctors.  Strict  orders  had  been  issued  that 
only  those  half  dead  should  be  admitted  to  hospital.  One 
of  our  men  remained  in  action  for  two  weeks  with  his  left 
arm  broken  by  a  piece  of  shrapnel,  so  he  said.  He  was  ac- 
tually afraid  to  go  to  the  doctor.  There  was,  in  fact,  no 
question  that  the  bone  of  his  forearm  was  broken,  but  no 
flesh  wound  was  to  be  seen. 

About  midday  we  once  more  took  the  northwest  road  for 
Galicia.  We  climbed  hills  which  had  been  well  plowed  by 
Russian  artillery.  To  get  through  a  wood  we  had  to  swing 
by  the  trees.  At  the  top  we  were  stopped  by  Colonel  Gom- 
bosh.  It  was  useless  to  tell  him  that  we  had  our  Major's 
orders  to  occupy  another  hill.  He  would  not  hear  of  it. 
He  needed  a  reserve,  and  we  must  stay.  Shells  of  all  kinds 
fell  thick  and  fast  in  the  forest,  and  there  was  violent  fight- 
ing everywhere,  the  swish  of  machine  gun  bullets  being 
conspicuous. 

Colonel  Gombosh  sent  Szinte  to  take  a  house  about  1 ,000 
meters  behind  the  Russian  front  line.    Then  he  showed  me 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES  121 

a  knoll  from  which  I  was  to  watch  for  his  return  and  shoot 
his  company  wholesale  if  he  returned  with  it.  We  then 
began  to  realize  that  we  were  dealing  with  one  who  had  lost 
his  wits.  But  Szinte's  men  went  off  to  the  Russian  trenches 
— and  few  of  them  came  back. 

Night  fighting  in  forests,  where  it  is  almost  impossible 
to  see  even  in  daytime,  has  something  quite  unreal  about  it. 
All  is  confusion,  and  fear  reigns  supreme.  Only  the  flashes 
can  be  seen,  and  it  is  by  them  that  the  enemy,  his  strength 
and  position,  can  be  seen.  Group  fights  with  group.  Often 
enough  you  come  upon  your  enemy  from  behind  without 
knowing  that  it  is  your  enemy.  I  once  met  a  lieutenant 
whose  cap  was  absolutely  cut  up  at  the  back.  He  had  got 
up  to  the  Russians,  crawling  at  full  length.  Bullets  had 
sliced  through  his  clothes.  But  he  had  come,  dragging  him- 
self along  from  tree  to  tree. 

The  men  passed  the  night  in  a  wide  trench,  dug  specially 
for  the  reserve,  and  I  myself  sheltered  behind  a  tree,  shiv- 
ering with  cold.  The  bullets  struck  the  tree-trunks  with  a 
sound  like  the  cracking  of  a  whip.  We  heard  that  the  Rus- 
sians were  using  explosive  bullets.  The  minute  you  got  up 
or  moved  from  your  protecting  tree,  you  were  gambling 
with  your  life.  It  was  indeed  a  night  of  horror.  At  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning  certain  platoons  received  an  order  to 
fix  bayonets  and  drive  the  Russians  from  a  trench.  They 
approached,  sent  out  scouts  ahead,  and  found  the  trench  full 
of  the — 24th  Territorials!  They  were  within  an  ace  of  ex- 
ecuting their  orders  and  killing  every  single  occupant.  The 
Colonel's  information  was  defective.  The  trench  had  been 
only  partly  occupied  by  the  Russians,  and  was  actually  held 
both  by  our  men  and  them.  In  fact,  they  had  been  having  a 
shooting-match  down  the  same  communication  trench.  In 
the  morning  we  returned  to  Havaj. 

November  28th. 

We  went  back  to  the  trenches.  Towards  five  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon  the  Russians  were  at  Stropko-Polena.  They 
bade  us  good-night  by  sending  over  four  shells,  which 
burst  round  the  village  church.  We  did  trench  duty  that 
night,  relieving  each  other  every  two  hours. 


122  THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES 

In  the  night  one  of  our  patrols  brought  us  in  three  Rus- 
sian soldiers,  well-clad,  healthy  young  men,  two  of  whom 
were  Russians,  the  third  a  Jew,  "master  of  the  Hebrew 
tongue."  I  can't  say  where  he  came  from.  It  was  he  who 
had  persuaded  the  others  to  surrender. 

Our  popular  Major  Paternos  left  us  at  last.  He  got 
poisoning  in  the  wound  on  his  hand  and  had  a  sharp  fever. 
That  night  I  felt  ill  myself :  I  was  reduced  to  skin  and  bones 
— I  could  hardly  stand  up.  I  had  had  quite  enough  of  sol- 
diering, and  so  made  up  my  mind  to  go. 

November  29th. 

In  the  morning  with  tears  in  my  eyes  I  said  good-by  to 
my  men.  Then,  having  gone  through  all  the  formalities,  I 
walked  as  far  as  Bukocz  and  drove  to  Eperjes  in  two  days, 
and  from  there  took  the  last  train  to  Budapest.  Both 
Eperjes  and  Cassorie  were  empty  of  inhabitants.  I  was 
the  last  officer  of  the  unit  who  had  started  out  with  the  bat- 
talion from  Fagaras  and  had  left  the  fighting  area.  After 
myself  there  was  none  left  but  Dr.  Schuller. 

Of  our  regiment  of  more  than  3,500  men  I  had  left  only 
170  at  Havaj.  Of  the  nth  Company,  which  had  left  Faga- 
ras 267  strong,  only  five  now  remained,  and  six  counting 
myself. 

God  had  willed  that  I  should  return  alive. 

BY  GRAND  DUKE  NICHOLAS 

At  the  beginning  of  March  (Old  Style),  in  the  principal 
chain  of  the  Carpathians,  we  only  held  the  region  of  the 
Dukla  Pass,  where  our  lines  formed  an  exterior  angle.  All 
the  other  passes — Lupkow  and  further  east — were  in  the 
hands  of  the  enemy. 

In  view  of  this  situation,  our  armies  were  assigned  the 
further  task  of  developing,  before  the  season  of  bad  roads 
due  to  melting  snows  began,  our  positions  in  the  Carpathians 
which  dominated  the  outlets  into  the  Hungarian  plain. 
About  the  period  indicated  great  Austrian  forces,  which 
had  been  concentrated  for  the  purpose  of  relieving  Przemysl, 
were  in  position  between  the  Lupkow  and  Uzsok  Passes. 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES  123 

It  was  for  this  sector  that  our  grand  attack  was  planned. 
Our  troops  had  to  carry  out  a  frontal  attack  under  very  dif- 
ficult conditions  of  terrain.  To  facilitate  their  attack,  there- 
fore, an  auxiliary  attack  was  decided  upon  on  a  front  in  the 
direction  of  Bartfeld  as  far  as  the  Lupkow.  This  secondary 
attack  was  opened  on  March  19th  and  was  completely  de- 
veloped. 

On  the  23rd  and  28th  of  March  our  troops  had  already 
begun  their  principal  attack  in  the  direction  of  Baligrod,  en- 
veloping the  enemy  positions  from  the  west  of  the  Lupkow 
Pass  and  on  the  east  near  the  source  of  the  San. 

The  enemy  opposed  the  most  desperate  resistance  to  the 
offensive  of  our  troops.  They  had  brought  up  every  avail- 
able man  on  the  front  from  the  direction  of  Bartfeld  as 
far  as  the  Uzsok  Pass,  including  even  German  troops  and 
numerous  cavalrymen  fighting  on  foot.  His  effectives  on 
this  front  exceeded  300  battalions.  Moreover,  our  troops 
had  to  overcome  great  natural  difficulties  at  every  step. 

Nevertheless,  from  April  5th — that  is,  eighteen  days 
after  the  beginning  of  our  offensive — the  valor  of  our 
troops  enabled  us  to  accomplish  the  task  that  had  been  set, 
and  we  captured  the  principal  chain  of  the  Carpathians  on 
the  front  Reghetoff-Volosate,  no  versts  (about  70  miles) 
long.  The  fighting  latterly  was  in  the  nature  of  actions  in 
detail  with  the  object  of  consolidating  the  successes  we  had 
won. 

To  sum  up :  On  the  whole  Carpathian  front,  between 
March  19th  and  April  12th,  the  enemy,  having  suffered 
enormous  losses,  left  in  our  hands,  in  prisoners  only,  at  least 
70,000  men,  including  about  900  officers.  Further,  we  cap- 
tured more  than  thirty  guns  and  200  machine  guns. 

On  April  16th  the  actions  in  the  Carpathians  were  con- 
centrated in  the  direction  of  Rostoki.  The  enemy,  notwith- 
standing the  enormous  losses  he  had  suffered,  delivered,  in 
the  course  of  that  day,  no  fewer  than  sixteen  attacks  in 
great  strength.  These  attacks,  all  of  which  were  abso- 
lutely barren  of  result,  were  made  against  the  heights  which 
we  had  occupied  further  to  the  east  of  Telepovce. 


i24  THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  PASSES 

BY  MAJOR  E.  MORAHT 

The  territory  of  the  fighting  in  the  Carpathians  still 
claims   the   chief    interest — especially  because   everywhere 
where  the  general  position  and  the  weather  conditions  and 
topographical  conditions  permitted  the  Austro-Hungarian- 
German  offensive  has  begun.     As  has  been  emphasized  on 
previous  occasions,  the  eagerness   for  undertaking  actions 
on  the  part  of  our  allies  had  never  subsided  at  any  point,  in 
spite  of  the  strenuous  rigors  of  a  stationary  warfare.     As 
early  as  April  14th  an  advance  enlivened  the  territory  north- 
west of  the  Uzsok  Pass.     The  position  on  the  heights  of 
Tucholka  has  been  won.    The  heights  west  and  east  of  the 
Laborcz   valley   are   in  the  hands   of   the   Austro-Germar: 
allies,  and  each  day  furnishes  new  proofs  of  the  forward 
pressure.     Of  especial  importance  is  the  capture  of  Russian 
points  of  support  southeast  of  Koziowa,  east  of  the  Orawa 
valley.     The  advance  takes  its  course  against  the  Galician 
town  of  Stryi.  The  progress  which  theAustro-German  south- 
ern army  made  has  so  far  been  moving  in  the  same  direction, 
and  one  can  understand  why  the  Russians  instituted  the 
fiercest  counter-attacks  in  order  to  force  the  allied  troops 
to  halt  in  this  territory.     The  counter-attacks,  however, 
ended  with  a  collapse  of  the  Russians,  and  the  resultant  pur- 
suit was  so  vigorous  that  twenty-six  more  trenches  were 
wrested  from  the  foe.     Daily  our  front  is  being  advanced 
in  a  northeasterly  direction,  and  there  is  little  prospect  for 
the  Russians  of  being  able  to  oppose  successful  resistance 
to  our  pressure.     For  it  is  not  a  matter  of  the  success  of 
a  single  fighting  group  that  has  been  shoving  forward  like 
a  wedge  from  the  great  line  of  attack,  but  of  a  strategic 
offensive  led  as  a  unit,  and  everywhere  winning  territory, 
the  time  for  which  seems  to  have  arrived. 


GERMANY  PROTESTS  AGAINST   AMERICAN 

MUNITION    SALES 

SHE  DEMANDS  A  REVISION,  IN  HER  FAVOR,  OF  NEUTRAL- 
ITY LAWS 

APRIL   4TH 

BARON  STEPHAN  BURIAN  ROBERT  LANSING 

On  April  4,  1915,  Germany  made  formal  protest  against  the  United 
States  Government  for  allowing  its  subjects  to  send  war  munitions 
to  the  Allies.  This  first  brought  the  question  officially  before  the 
American  people ;  but  it  had  already  been  familiar  to  them  through 
the  widespread  German  propaganda.  The  German  protest  was  brief 
and  did  not  much  discuss  the  merits  of  the  case;  but  in  the  following 
June  there  came  from  the  Austrian  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  a 
similar  protest,  carefully  thought  out,  and  shrewdly  worded.  The 
Austrian  argument  is  here  presented  as  making  the  strongest  state- 
ment of  the  case  for  the  Teutonic  Powers.  We  give  also  the  official 
position  taken  by  the  United  States  Government  in  the  reply  of  Sec- 
retary Lansing. 

As  to  the  general  merits  of  the  case,  and  also  the  misleading 
character  of  several  of  the  Austrian  official  statements,  it  scarcely 
seems  necessary  to  add  a  single  word  to  Mr.  Lansing's  vigorously 
phrased  "retort  courteous,"  especially  to  its  last  two  paragraphs.  Yet 
to  the  American  who  may  have  become  confused  by  the  floods  of 
argument  over  this  matter,  it  may  be  well  to  reemphasize  the  follow- 
ing central  fact.  What  Germany  and  Austria  asked  us  to  do  was  to 
reject  the  established  International  laws  and  proclaim  a  new  one  for 
their  benefit.  Quite  aside  therefore  from  the  wisdom  of  the  new  law 
itself — and  it  was  most  unwise — rises  the  superior  consideration  that 
to  have  altered  the  old  law  during  the  stress  of  the  Great  War  would 
have  been  to  shift  the  scales  of  combat  suddenly,  blindly  and  without 
that  intent,  against  the  other  side.  The  Allies  would  have  been  de- 
prived of  a  great  assistance  upon  which  they  had  counted  from  the 
beginning.  The  change  would  have  brought  them  measurably  near  to 
disaster,  would  have  been  only  one  step  removed  from  declaring  open 
war  against  them.  It  was  characteristic  of  the  old  Germany  that  she 
should  have  expected — or  at  least  requested — the  United  States  thus 
to  defy  and  do  her  utmost  to  ruin  the  rest  of  the  world  for  Ger- 
many's benefit,  and  that  the  request  should  have  been  based  on  the 
grounds  of  morality  at  a  moment  when  Kaiser,  Chancellor  and  all  their 
Generals  were  vehemently  declaring  that  they  themselves  would  over- 
step all  morality  for  the  sake  of  victory. 

As  to  the  abstract  morality  of  the  ammunition  trade  in  times  of 
peace,  we  face  there  a  solemn  problem  for  the  future.     It  is  obvious 

125 


126    GERMANY  PROTESTS  MUNITION  SALES 

that  so  long  as  some  criminals  will  rob  and  murder,  honest  folk 
must  defend  themselves  by  some  form  of  weapons.  To  forbid  all 
sale  of  firearms  would  be  to  place  these  same  honest  folk  wholly 
at  the  mercy  of  the  malefactors  who  chose  to  manufacture  arms  in 
secret.  It  would  be  the  noble  but  scarcely  practical  method  of  the 
missionary  who  blesses  the  heathen  while  they  devour  him.  Car- 
ried out  on  the  vast  scale  on  which  Germany  urged  it,  this  new  law 
would  have  been  the  surest  possible  way  of  surrendering  the  whole 
world  to  the  German  autocrats.  They  had  declared  themselves  su- 
perior to  those  American  scruples  upon  which  they  now  sought  to 
build.  c.  F.  h. 

BY  BARON  BURIAN 

Vienna,  June  29,  191 5. 

THE  far-reaching  effects  which  result  from  the  fact  that 
for  a  long  time  a  traffic  in  munitions  of  war  to  the 
greatest  extent  has  been  carried  on  between  the  United 
States  of  America  on  the  one  hand  and  Great  Britain  and 
its  allies  on  the  other,  while  Austria-Hungary  as  well  as 
Germany  have  been  absolutely  excluded  from  the  American 
market,  have  from  the  very  beginning  attracted  the  most 
serious  attention  of  the  Imperial  and  Royal  Government. 

If  now  the  undersigned  permits  himself  to  address  him- 
self to  this  question,  with  which  the  Washington  Cabinet 
has  been  concerned  until  now  only  with  the  Imperial  Ger- 
man Government,  he  follows  the  injunction  of  imperative 
duty  to  protect  the  interests  intrusted  to  him  from  further 
serious  damage  which  results  from  this  situation  as  well  to 
Austria-Hungary  as  to  the  German  Empire. 

Although  the  Imperial  and  Royal  Government  is  abso- 
lutely convinced  that  the  attitude  of  the  Federal  Govern- 
ment in  this  connection  emanates  from  no  other  intention 
than  to  maintain  the  strictest  neutrality  and  to  conform 
to  the  letter  of  the  provisions  of  international  treaties, 
nevertheless  the  question  arises  whether  the  conditions  as 
they  have  developed  during  the  course  of  the  war,  certainly 
independently  of  the  will  of  the  Federal  Government,  are 
not  such  as  in  effect  thwart  the  intentions  of  the  Washing- 
ton Cabinet  or  even  actually  oppose  them.  In  the  affirma- 
tive case — and  affirmation,  in  the  opinion  of  the  Imperial 
and  Royal  Government,  cannot  be  doubted — then  immedi- 
ately follows  the  further  question  whether  it  would  not 


GERMANY  PROTESTS  MUNITION  SALES    127 

seem  possible,  even  imperative,  that  appropriate  measures 
be  adopted  toward  bringing  into  full  effect  the  desire  of 
the  Federal  Government  to  maintain  an  attitude  of  strict 
parity  with  respect  to  both  belligerent  parties.  The  Im- 
perial and  Royal  Government  does  not  hesitate  to  answer 
also  this  question  unqualifiedly  in  the  affirmative. 

It  cannot  certainly  have  escaped  the  attention  of  the 
American  Government,  which  has  so  eminently  cooperated 
in  the  work  of  The  Hague,  that  the  meaning  and  essence 
of  neutrality  are  in  no  way  exhaustively  dealt  with  in  the 
fragmentary  provisions  of  the  pertinent  treaties.  If  one 
takes  into  consideration  particularly  the  genesis  of  Article  7 
of  the  Fifth  and  Thirteenth  Conventions,  respectively,  upon 
which  the  Federal  Government  clearly  relies  in  the  present 
case,  and  the  wording  of  which,  as  is  in  no  way  to  be  de- 
nied, affords  it  a  formal  pretext  for  the  toleration  of  traffic 
in  munitions  of  war  now  being  carried  on  by  the  United 
States,  it  is  only  necessary,  in  order  to  measure  the  true 
spirit  and  import  of  this  provision,  which  moreover  ap- 
pears to  have  been  departed  from  in  the  prevention  of  the 
delivery  of  vessels  of  war  and  in  the  prevention  of  certain 
deliveries  to  vessels  of  war  of  belligerent  nations,  to  point 
out  the  fact  that  the  detailed  privileges  conceded  to  neu- 
tral states  in  the  sense  of  the  preamble  to  the  above-men- 
tioned convention  are  limited  by  the  requirements  of  neu- 
trality which  conform  to  the  universally  recognized  prin- 
ciples of  international  law. 

According  to  all  authorities  on  international  law  who 
concern  themselves  more  particularly  with  the  question  now 
under  consideration,  a  neutral  government  may  not  permit 
traffic  in  contraband  of  war  to  be  carried  on  without  hin- 
drance when  this  traffic  assumes  such  a  form  or  such  dimen- 
sions that  the  neutrality  of  the  nation  becomes  involved 
thereby. 

If  any  one  of  the  various  criteria  which  have  been  laid 
down  in  science  in  this  respect  be  used  as  a  basis  in  deter- 
mining the  permissibility  of  commerce  in  contraband,  one 
reaches  the  conclusion  from  each  of  these  criteria  that  the 
exportation  of  war  requisites  from  the  United  States,  as 


128    GERMANY  PROTESTS  MUNITION  SALES 

is  being  carried  on  in  the  present  war,  is  not  to  be  brought 
into  accord  with  the  demands  of  neutrality. 

The  question  now  before  us  is  surely  not  whether 
American  industries  which  are  engaged  in  the  manufacture 
of  war  material  should  be  protected  from  loss  in  the  ex- 
port trade  that  was  theirs  in  time  of  peace.  Rather  has 
that  industry  soared  to  unimagined  heights.  In  order  to 
turn  out  the  huge  quantities  of  arms,  ammunition,  and  other 
war  material  of  every  description  ordered  in  the  past  months 
by  Great  Britain  and  her  allies  from  the  United  States,  not 
only  the  full  capacity  of  the  existing  plants  but  also  their 
transformation  and  enlargement  and  the  creation  of  new 
large  plants,  as  well  as  a  flocking  of  workmen  of  all  trades 
into  that  branch  of  industry,  in  brief  far-reaching  changes 
of  economic  life  encompassing  the  whole  country,  became 
necessary.  From  no  quarter  then  can  there  come  any  ques- 
tion of  the  right  of  the  American  Government  to  prohibit 
through  the  issuance  of  an  embargo  that  enormous  ex- 
portation of  war  implements  that  is  openly  carried  on  and 
besides  is  commonly  known  to  be  availed  of  by  only  one 
of  the  parties  to  the  war.  If  the  Federal  Government  would 
exercise  that  power  it  possesses,  it  could  not  lay  itself  open 
to  blame  if,  in  order  to  keep  within  the  requirements  of  the 
law  of  the  land,  it  adopted  the  course  of  enacting  a  law. 
For  while  the  principle  obtains  that  a  neutral  state  may  not 
alter  the  rules  in  force  within  its  province  concerning  its  atti- 
tude toward  belligerents  while  war  is  being  waged,  yet  this 
principle,  as  clearly  appears  from  the  preamble  to  the  Thir- 
teenth Hague  Convention,  suffers  an  exception  in  the  case 
"oil  V experience  acquise  en  demontrerait  la  necessite  pour 
la  sauvegarde  de  ses  droits."  [Where  experience  has  shown 
the  necessity  thereof  for  the  protection  of  its  rights.] 

Moreover,  this  case  is  already  established  for  the  Ameri- 
can Government  through  the  fact  that  Austria-Hungary, 
as  well  as  Germany,  is  cut  off  from  all  commercial  inter- 
course with  the  United  States  of  America  without  the  ex- 
istence of  a  legal  prerequisite  therefor — a  legally  consti- 
tuted blockade. 

In  reply  to  the  possible  objection  that,  notwithstanding 


GERMANY  PROTESTS  MUNITION  SALES    129 

the  willingness  of  American  industry  to  furnish  merchan- 
dise to  Austria-Hungary  and  Germany  as  well  as  to  Great 
Britain  and  her  allies,  it  is  not  possible  for  the  United  States 
of  America  to  trade  with  Austria-Hungary  and  Germany 
as  the  result  of  the  war  situation,  it  may  be  pointed  out  that 
the  Federal  Government  is  undoubtedly  in  a  position  to  im- 
prove the  situation  described.  It  would  be  amply  sufficient 
to  confront  the  opponents  of  Austria-Hungary  and  Ger- 
many with  the  possibility  of  the  prohibition  of  the  exporta- 
tion of  foodstuffs  and  raw  materials  In  case  legitimate  com- 
merce in  these  articles  between  the  Union  and  the  two  Cen- 
tral Powers  should  not  be  allowed.  If  the  Washington 
Cabinet  should  find  itself  prepared  for  an  action  in  this 
sense,  it  would  not  only  be  following  the  tradition  always 
held  in  such  high  regard  in  the  United  States  of  contending 
for  the  freedom  of  legitimate  maritime  commerce,  but  would 
also  earn  the  high  merit  of  nullifying  the  wanton  efforts  of 
the  enemies  of  Austria-Hungary  and  Germany  to  use  hun- 
ger as  an  ally. 

The  Imperial  and  Royal  Government  may  therefore,  in 
the  spirit  of  the  excellent  relations  which  have  never  ceased 
to  exist  between  the  Austro-Hungarian  Monarchy  and  the 
United  States  of  America,  appeal  to  the  Federal  Govern- 
ment in  sincere  friendship,  in  view  of  the  expositions  here 
set  forth,  to  subject  its  previously  adopted  standpoint  in 
this  so  important  question  to  a  mature  reconsideration.  A 
revision  of  the  attitude  observed  by  the  Government  of  the 
Union  in  the  sense  of  the  views  advocated  by  the  Imperial 
and  Royal  Government  would,  according  to  the  convictions 
of  the  latter,  be  not  only  within  the  bounds  of  the  rights  and 
obligations  of  a  neutral  government,  but  also  in  close  keep- 
ing with  those  principles  dictated  by  true  humanity  and 
love  of  peace  which  the  United  States  has  ever  written  on 
its  banner. 

BY  ROBERT  LANSING 

Washington,  August  12,  191 5. 
The  Government  of  the  United  States  has  given  careful 
consideration  to  the  statement  of  the  Imperial  and  Royal 

w.,  VOL.  III.— 9 


130    GERMANY  PROTESTS  MUNITION  SALES 

Government  in  regard  to  the  exportation  of  arms  and  am- 
munition from  the  United  States  to  the  countries  at  war 
with  Austria-Hungary  and  Germany.  The  Government  of 
the  United  States  notes  with  satisfaction  the  recognition 
by  the  Imperial  and  Royal  Government  of  the  undoubted 
fact  that  its  attitude  with  regard  to  the  exportation  of  arms 
and  ammunition  from  the  United  States  is  prompted  by  its 
intention  to  "maintain  the  strictest  neutrality  and  conform  to 
the  letter  with  the  provisions  of  international  treaties,"  but 
is  surprised  to  find  the  Imperial  and  Royal  Government 
implying  that  the  observance  of  the  strict  principles  of  the 
law  under  the  conditions  which  have  developed  in  the  pres- 
ent war  is  insufficient,  and  asserting  that  this  Government 
should  go  beyond  the  long  recognized  rules  governing  such 
traffic  by  neutrals  and  adopt  measures  to  "maintain  an  atti- 
tude of  strict  parity  with  respect  to  both  belligerent  parties." 
To  this  assertion  of  an  obligation  to  change  or  modify 
the  rules  of  international  usage  on  account  of  special  con- 
ditions the  Government  of  the  United  States  cannot  ac- 
cede. The  recognition  of  an  obligation  of  this  sort,  un- 
known to  the  international  practice  of  the  past,  would  im- 
pose upon  every  neutral  nation  a  duty  to  sit  in  judgment  on 
the  progress  of  a  war  and  to  restrict  its  commercial  inter- 
course with  a  belligerent  whose  naval  successes  prevented 
the  neutral  from  trade  with  the  enemy.  The  contention  of 
the  Imperial  and  Royal  Government  appears  to  be  that  the 
advantages  gained  to  a  belligerent  by  its  superiority  on  the 
sea  should  be  equalized  by  the  neutral  Powers  by  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  system  of  non-intercourse  with  the  victor. 
The  Imperial  and  Royal  Government  confines  its  comments 
to  arms  and  ammunition,  but  if  the  principle  for  which  it 
contends  is  sound  it  should  apply  with  equal  force  to  all 
articles  of  contraband.  A  belligerent  controlling  the  high 
seas  might  possess  an  ample  supply  of  arms  and  ammuni- 
tion, but  be  in  want  of  food  and  clothing.  On  the  novel 
principle  that  equalization  is  a  neutral  duty,  neutral  nations 
would  be  obliged  to  place  an  embargo  on  such  articles  be- 
cause one  of  the  belligerents  could  not  obtain  them  through 
commercial  intercourse. 


GERMANY  PROTESTS  MUNITION  SALES    131 

But  if  this  principle,  so  strongly  urged  by  the  Imperial 
and  Royal  Government,  should  be  admitted  to  obtain  by 
reason  of  the  superiority  of  a  belligerent  at  sea,  ought  it 
not  to  operate  equally  as  to  a  belligerent  superior  on  land? 
Applying  this  theory  of  equalization,  a  belligerent  who  lacks 
the  necessary  munitions  to  contend  successfully  on  land 
ought  to  be  permitted  to  purchase  them  from  neutrals,  while 
a  belligerent  with  an  abundance  of  war  stores  or  with  the 
power  to  produce  them  should  be  debarred  from  such  traffic. 

Manifestly  the  idea  of  strict  neutrality  now  advanced  by 
the  Imperial  and  Royal  Government  would  involve  a  neu- 
tral nation  in  a  mass  of  perplexities  which  would  obscure 
the  whole  field  of  international  obligation,  produce  eco- 
nomic confusion  and  deprive  all  commerce  and  industry  of 
legitimate  fields  of  enterprise  already  heavily  burdened  by 
the  unavoidable  restrictions  of  war. 

In  this  connection  it  is  pertinent  to  direct  the  attention 
of  the  Imperial  and  Royal  Government  to  the  fact  that  Aus- 
tria-Hungary and  Germany,  particularly  the  latter,  have 
during  the  years  preceding  the  present  war  produced  a  great 
surplus  of  arms  and  ammunition,  which  they  sold  through- 
out the  world  and  especially  to  belligerents.  Never  during 
that  period  did  either  of  them  suggest  or  apply  the  prin- 
ciple now  advocated  by  the  Imperial  and  Royal  Govern- 
ment. 

During  the  Boer  War  between  Great  Britain  and  the 
South  African  republics  the  patrol  of  the  coast  of  neigh- 
boring neutral  colonies  by  British  naval  vessels  prevented 
arms  and  ammunition  reaching  the  Transvaal  or  the  Orange 
Free  State.  The  allied  republics  were  in  a  situation  almost 
identical  'in  that  respect  with  that  in  which  Austria-Hun- 
gary and  Germany  find  themselves  at  the  present  time. 
Yet,  in  spite  of  the  commercial  isolation  of  one  belligerent, 
Germany  sold  to  Great  Britain  and  the  other  belligerent, 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  kilos  of  explosives,  gunpowder, 
cartridges,  shot  and  weapons ;  and  it  is  known  that  Austria- 
Hungary  also  sold  similar  munitions  to  the  same  purchaser, 
though  in  small  quantities.  While,  as  compared  with  the 
present  war,  the  quantities  sold  were  small  (a  table  of  the 


132    GERMANY  PROTESTS  MUNITION  SALES 

sales  is  appended),  the  principle  of  neutrality  involved  was 
the  same.  If  at  that  time  Austria-Hungary  and  her  present 
ally  had  refused  to  sell  arms  and  ammunition  to  Great 
Britain  on  the  ground  that  to  do  so  would  violate  the  spirit 
of  strict  neutrality  the  Imperial  and  Royal  Government 
might  with  greater  consistency  and  greater  force  urge  its 
present  contention. 

It  might  be  further  pointed  out  that  during  the  Crimean 
War  large  quantities  of  arms  and  military  stores  were  fur- 
nished to  Russia  by  Prussian  manufacturers;  that  during 
the  recent  war  between  Turkey  and  Italy,  as  this  Govern- 
ment is  advised,  arms  and  ammunition  were  furnished  to 
the  Ottoman  Government  by  Germany;  and  that  during 
the  Balkan  wars  the  belligerents  were  supplied  with  muni- 
tions by  both  Austria-Hungary  and  Germany.  While  these 
latter  cases  are  not  analogous,  as  in  the  case  of  the  South 
African  War,  to  the  situation  of  Austria-Hungary  and 
Germany  in  the  present  war,  they  nevertheless  clearly  in- 
dicate the  long  established  practice  of  the  two  empires  in 
the  matter  of  trade  in  war  supplies. 

In  view  of  the  foregoing  statements,  this  Government 
is  reluctant  to  believe  that  the  Imperial  and  Royal  Govern- 
ment will  ascribe  to  the  United  States  a  lack  of  impartial 
neutrality  in  continuing  its  legitimate  trade  in  all  kinds  of 
supplies  used  to  render  the  armed  forces  of  a  belligerent 
efficient,  even  though  the  circumstances  of  the  present  war 
prevent  Austria-Hungary  from  obtaining  such  supplies 
from  the  markets  of  the  United  States,  which  have  been 
and  remain,  so  far  as  the  action  and  policy  of  this  Govern- 
ment are  concerned,  open  to  all  belligerents  alike. 

But  in  addition  to  the  question  of  principle  there  is  a 
practical  and  substantial  reason  why  the  Government  of 
the  United  States  has  from  the  foundation  of  the  republic 
advocated  and  practiced  unrestricted  trade  in  arms  and  mili- 
tary supplies.  It  has  never  been  the  policy  of  this  country 
to  maintain  in  times  of  peace  a  large  military  establishment 
or  stores  of  arms  and  ammunition  sufficient  to  repel  in- 
vasion by  a  well  equipped  and  powerful  enemy.  It  has  de- 
sired to  remain  at  peace  with  all  nations  and  to  avoid  any 


GERMANY  PROTESTS  MUNITION  SALES    133 

appearance  of  menacing  such  peace  by  the  threat  of  its 
armies  and  navies.  In  consequence  of  this  standing  policy, 
the  United  States  would,  in  the  event  of  an  attack  by  a  for- 
eign Power,  be  at  the  outset  of  the  war  seriously,  if  not 
fatally,  embarrassed  by  the  lack  of  arms  and  ammunition 
and  by  the  means  to  produce  them  in  sufficient  quantities  to 
supply  the  requirements  of  national  defense.  The  United 
States  has  always  depended  upon  the  right  and  power  to 
purchase  arms  and  ammunition  from  neutral  nations  in  case 
of  foreign  attack.  This  right,  which  it  claims  for  itself,  it 
cannot  deny  to  others. 

A  nation  whose  principle  and  policy  it  is  to  rely  upon 
international  obligations  and  international  justice  to  pre- 
serve its  political  and  territorial  integrity  might  become  the 
prey  of  an  aggressive  nation  whose  policy  and  practice  it  is 
to  increase  its  military  strength  during  times  of  peace  with 
the  design  of  conquest,  unless  the  nation  attacked  can,  after 
war  had  been  declared,  go  into  the  markets  of  the  world  and 
purchase  the  means  to  defend  itself  against  the  aggressor. 

The  general  adoption  by  the  nations  of  the  world  of  the 
theory  that  neutral  Powers  ought  to  prohibit  the  sale  of 
arms  and  ammunition  to  belligerents  would  compel  every  na- 
tion to  have  in  readiness  at  all  times  sufficient  munitions  of 
war  to  meet  any  emergency  which  might  arise  and  to  erect 
and  maintain  establishments  for  the  manufacture  of  arms 
and  ammunition  sufficient  to  supply  the  needs  of  its  military 
and  naval  forces  throughout  the  progress  of  a  war.  Mani- 
festly the  application  of  this  theory  would  result  in  every 
nation  becoming  an  armed  camp,  ready  to  resist  aggression 
and  tempted  to  employ  force  in  asserting  its  rights  rather 
than  appeal  to  reason  and  justice  for  the  settlement  of 
international  disputes. 

Perceiving,  as  it  does,  that  the  adoption  of  the  principle 
that  it  is  the  duty  of  a  neutral  to  prohibit  the  sale  of  arms 
and  ammunition  to  a  belligerent  during  the  progress  of  a 
war  would  inevitably  give  the  advantage  to  a  belligerent 
which  had  encouraged  the  manufacture  of  munitions  in  time 
of  peace  and  which  had  laid  in  the  vast  stores  of  arms  and 
ammunition  in  anticipation  of  war,  the  Government  of  the 


134    GERMANY  PROTESTS  MUNITION  SALES 

United  States  is  convinced  that  the  adoption  of  the  theory- 
would  force  militarism  on  the  world  and  work  against  that 
universal  peace  which  is  the  desire  and  purpose  of  all  na- 
tions which  exalt  justice  and  righteousness  in  their  relations 
with  one  another. 

The  Government  of  the  United  States  in  the  foregoing 
discussion  of  the  practical  reason  why  it  has  advocated  and 
practiced  trade  in  munitions  of  war  wishes  to  be  understood 
as  speaking  with  no  thought  of  expressing  or  implying  any 
judgment  with  regard  to  the  circumstances  of  the  present 
war,  but  as  merely  putting  very  frankly  the  argument  in 
this  matter  which  has  been  conclusive  in  determining  the 
policy  of  the  United  States. 

While  the  practice  of  nations,  so  well  illustrated  by  the 
practice  of  Austria-Hungary  and  Germany  during  the 
South  African  War,  and  the  manifest  evil  which  would 
result  from  a  change  of  that  practice  render  compliance  with 
the  suggestion  of  the  Imperial  and  Royal  Government  out 
of  the  question,  certain  assertions  appearing  in  the  Aus- 
tro-Hungarian  statement  as  grounds  for  its  contention  can- 
not be  passed  over  without  comment.  These  assertions  are 
substantially  as  follows  :  ( I )  That  the  exportation  of  arms 
and  ammunition  from  the  United  States  to  belligerents  con- 
travenes the  preamble  of  the  Hague  Convention,  No.  13, 
of  1907.  (2)  That  it  is  inconsistent  with  the  refusal  of 
this  Government  to  allow  delivery  of  supplies  to  vessels  of 
war  on  the  high  seas.  (3)  That  "according  to  all  authori- 
ties on  international  law  who  concern  themselves  more 
properly  with  the  question,"  exportation  should  be  pre- 
vented "when  this  traffic  assumes  such  a  form  or  such  di- 
mensions that  the  neutrality  of  a  nation  becomes  involved 
thereby." 

As  to  the  assertion  that  the  exportation  of  arms  and 
ammunition  contravenes  the  preamble  of  the  Hague  Con- 
vention, No.  13,  of  1907,  this  Government  presumes  that 
reference  is  made  to  the  last  paragraph  of  the  preamble, 
which  is  as  follows  :  "Seeing  that,  in  this  category  of  ideas, 
these  rules  should  not,  in  principle,  be  altered,  in  the  course 
of  the  war,  by  a  neutral  power,  except  in  a  case  where  ex- 


GERMANY  PROTESTS  MUNITION  SALES   135 

perience  has  shown  the  necessity  for  such  change  for  the 
protection  of  the  rights  of  that  Power." 

Manifestly  the  only  ground  to  change  the  rules  laid 
down  by  the  convention,  one  of  which,  it  should  be  noted, 
explicitly  declares  that  a  neutral  is  not  bound  to  prohibit 
the  exportation  of  contraband  of  war,  is  the  necessity  of  a 
neutral  Power  to  do  so  in  order  to  protect  its  own  rights. 
The  right  and  duty  to  determine  when  this  necessity  ex- 
ists rests  with  the  neutral,  not  with  a  belligerent.  It  is 
discretionary,  not  mandatory.  If  a  neutral  Power  does  not 
avail  itself  of  the  right,  a  belligerent  is  not  privileged  to 
complain,  for  in  doing  so  it  would  be  in  the  position  of  de- 
claring to  the  neutral  Power  what  is  necessary  to  protect 
the  Power's  own  rights.  The  Imperial  and  Royal  Govern- 
ment cannot  but  perceive  that  a  complaint  of  this  nature 
would  invite  just  rebuke. 

With  reference  to  the  asserted  inconsistency  of  the 
course  adopted  by  this  Government  in  relation  to  the  ex- 
portation of  arms  and  ammunition  and  that  followed  in  not 
allowing  supplies  to  be  taken  from  its  ports  to  ships  of  war 
on  the  high  seas,  it  is  only  necessary  to  point  out  that  the 
prohibition  of  supplies  to  ships  of  war  rests  upon  the  prin- 
ciple that  a  neutral  power  must  not  permit  its  territory  to 
become  a  naval  base  for  either  belligerent.  A  war  ship  may, 
under  certain  restrictions,  obtain  fuel  and  supplies  in  a  neu- 
tral port  once  in  three  months.  To  permit  merchant  ves- 
sels acting  as  tenders  to  carry  supplies  more  often  than 
three  months  and  in  unlimited  amount  would  defeat  the  pur- 
pose of  the  rule  and  might  constitute  the  neutral  territory 
a  naval  base.  Furthermore,  this  Government  is  unaware 
that  any  Austro-Hungarian  ship  of  war  has  sought  to  obtain 
supplies  from  a  port  in  the  United  States,  either  directly  or 
indirectly.  This  subject  has,  however,  already  been  dis- 
cussed with  the  Imperial  German  Government,  to  which  the 
position  of  this  Government  was  fully  set  forth  December 
24,  1914. 

In  view  of  the  positive  assertion  in  the  statement  of  the 
Imperial  and  Royal  Government  as  to  the  unanimity  of  the 
opinions  of  text  writers  as  to  the  exportation  of  contraband 


136    GERMANY  PROTESTS  MUNITION  SALES 

being  unneutral,  this  Government  has  caused  a  careful  ex- 
amination of  the  principal  authorities  on  international  laws 
to  be  made.  As  a  result  of  this  examination  it  has  come  to 
the  conclusion  that  the  Imperial  and  Royal  Government  has 
been  misled  and  has  inadvertently  made  an  erroneous  asser- 
tion. Less  than  one-fifth  of  the  authorities  consulted  ad- 
vocate unreservedly  the  prohibition  of  the  export  of  contra- 
band. Several  of  those  who  constitute  this  minority  ad- 
mit that  the  practice  of  nations  has  been  otherwise.  It  need 
not  be  inopportune  to  direct  particular  attention  to  the 
declaration  of  the  German  authority,  Paul  Einicke,  who 
states  that,  at  the  beginning  of  a  war,  belligerents  have 
never  remonstrated  against  the  enactment  of  prohibitions  on 
trade  in  contraband,  but  adds  "that  such  prohibitions  may  be 
considered  as  violations  of  neutrality,  or  at  least  as  un- 
friendly acts,  if  they  are  enacted  during  a  war  with  the  pur- 
pose to  close  unexpectedly  the  sources  of  supply  to  a  party 
which  heretofore  had  relied  on  them." 

The  Government  of  the  United  States  deems  it  unneces- 
sary to  extend  further  at  the  present  time  a  consideration 
of  the  statement  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  Government.  The 
principles  of  international  law,  the  practice  of  nations,  the 
national  safety  of  the  United  States  and  other  nations  with- 
out great  military  and  naval  establishments,  the  prevention 
of  increased  armies  and  navies,  the  adoption  of  peaceful 
methods  for  the  adjustment  of  international  differences, 
and  finally,  neutrality  itself,  are  opposed  to  the  prohibition 
by  a  neutral  nation  of  the  exportation  of  arms,  ammunition, 
or  other  munitions  of  war  to  belligerent  Powers  during  the 
progress  of  the  war. 


THE  CANADIANS  REPEL  THE  FIRST  GAS 

ATTACK 

THE  SECOND  BATTLE  OF  YPRES 

APRIL  22ND 

OFFICIAL  GERMAN  PRESS  REPORT 
SIR  JOHN  FRENCH  SIR  MAX  AITKEN 

What  the  British  tried  to  do  at  Neuve  Chapelle,  break  the  deadlock 
on  the  western  front,  the  Germans  attempted  in  the  second  battle 
of  Ypres.  They  had  developed  a  terrible  new  ag£nt,  the  poison-gas, 
by  which  they  hoped  to  wipe  out  every  life  in  an  opposing  trench  and 
so  break  the  Ally  line  of  defense,  sweep  over  it  at  will,  and  drive 
their   foemen  to   despair  with   agony  and   terror. 

Such  a  weapon  of  death  and  torture  was  in  direct  opposition  to  the 
International  Laws  of  war  as  adopted  by  the  Hague  Convention  of 
1909.  The  German  charge,  that  France  had  also  been  experimenting 
with  some  form  of  gas  as  a  weapon,  cannot  be  as  wholly  dismissed 
as  most  of  the  official  German  charges,  which  were  so  often,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  the  boldest  falsehoods  intended  to  befog  the  evi- 
dence of  their  own  depravity.  Yet  the  French  at  most  had  done  no 
more  than  consider  the  use  of  small  quantities  of  stupefying  gas, 
thrown  in  shells,  and  intended  to  daze  an  enemy  for  just  a  moment 
while  the  French  attacked.  That  is  to  say,  the  French  soldiers  them- 
selves were  to  rush  through  the  stupefying  gas.  That  the  reader  may 
balance  the  two  devices,  we  give  here  in  full  the  official  German  charge 
upon  which  they  sought  to  excuse  their  own  use  of  the  poison-gas. 
In  reality,  of  course,  the  German  leaders  cared  nothing  for  such  ex- 
cuses. They  had  made  their  position  fiercely  clear,  that  they  would 
seize  on  any  means  whatsoever,  no  matter  how  false  or  cruel,  if  it 
would  help  them  to  victory. 

As  to  the  British,  they  were  too  firmly  set  in  the  old  methods  of 
fighting  to  have  even  considered  gas  as  a  weapon.  Hence  they  were 
as  astounded  as  they  were  infuriated  and  disgusted  when  that  poison- 
ous cloud  swept  down  on  them  at  Ypres,  and  they  learned  the  horror 
of  torturing  death  which  it  contained.  Surely  History  will  never  for- 
get the  splendid  heroism  of  their  resistance. 

The  glory  and  the  agony  of  it  fell  mainly  to  the  Canadians,  that 
first  contingent  which  had  rushed  so  loyally  to  Britain's  aid.  So  we 
let  a  Canadian  speak  of  it  here,  and  give  also  the  official  story  as  nar- 
rated by  the  British  commander,  Field  Marshal — as  he  had  by  this 
time  become — Sir  John  French. 


*37 


138       THE  YPRES  GAS  ATTACK 

OFFICIAL  GERMAN  PRESS  REPORT  OF  JUNE  25,  191 5 

FOR  every  one  who  has  kept  an  unbiased  judgment,  the 
official  assertions  of  the  strictly  accurate  and  truthful 
German  military  administration  will  be  sufficient  to  prove 
the  prior  use  of  asphyxiating  gases  by  our  opponents. 
April  1 6th  the  French  were  making  increased  use  of  as- 
phyxiating bombs.  But  let  whoever  still  doubts,  consider 
the  following  instructions  for  the  systematic  preparation 
of  this  means  of  warfare  by  the  French,  issued  by  the 
French  War  Ministry,  under  date  of  February  21,  1915: 

"Ministry  of  War,  February  21,  191 5. 

"Remarks  concerning  shells  with  stupefying  gases : 

"The  so-called  shells  with  stupefying  gases  that  are 
being  manufactured  by  our  central  factories  contain  a  fluid 
which  streams  forth  after  the  explosion,  in  the  form  of 
vapors  that  irritate  the  eyes,  nose,  and  throat.  There  are 
two  kinds  :  hand  grenades  and  cartridges. 

"Hand  Grenades. — The  grenades  have  the  form  of  an 
egg;  their  diameter  in  the  middle  is  six  centimeters,  their 
height  twelve  centimeters,  their  weight  400  grams.  They 
are  intended  for  short  distances,  and  have  an  appliance  for 
throwing  by  hand.  They  are  equipped  with  an  inscription 
giving  directions  for  use.  They  are  lighted  with  a  small  bit 
of  material  for  friction  pasted  on  the  directions,  after  which 
they  must  be  thrown  away.  The  explosion  follows  seven 
seconds  after  lighting.  A  small  cover  of  brass  and  a  top 
screwed  on  protect  the  lighted  matter.  Their  purpose  is  to 
make  untenable  the  surroundings  of  the  place  where  they 
burst.  Their  effect  is  often  considerably  impaired  by  a 
strong  rising  wind. 

"Cartridges. — The  cartridges  have  a  cylindrical  form. 
Their  diameter  is  twenty-eight  millimeters,  their  height  ten 
centimeters,  their  weight  200  grams.  They  are  intended 
for  use  at  longer  distances  than  can  be  negotiated  with  the 
hand  grenades.  With  an  angle  of  twenty-five  degrees  at 
departure,  they  will  carry  230  meters.  They  have  central 
lighting  facilities  and  are  fired  with  ignition  bullet  guns. 
The  powder  lights  a  little  internal  ignition  mass  by  means 


THE  YPRES  GAS  ATTACK  139 

of  which  the  cartridges  are  caused  to  explode  five  seconds 
after  leaving  the  rifle.  The  cartridges  have  the  same  pur- 
pose as  the  hand  grenades  but  because  of  their  very  small 
amount  of  fluid  they  must  be  fired  in  great  numbers  at  the 
same  time. 

"Precautionary  measures  to  be  observed  in  attacks  on 
trenches  into  which  shells  with  asphyxiating  gases  have  been 
thrown. — The  vapors  spread  by  means  of  the  shells  with 
asphyxiating  gases  are  not  deadly,  at  least  when  small  quan- 
tities are  used  and  their  effect  is  only  momentary.  The 
duration  of  the  effect  depends  upon  the  atmospheric  condi- 
tions. 

"It  is  advisable  therefore  to  attack  the  trenches  into 
which  such  hand  grenades  have  been  thrown  and  which  the 
enemy  has  nevertheless  not  evacuated  before  the  vapors  are 
completely  dissipated.  The  attacking  troops,  moreover, 
must  wear  protective  goggles  and  in  addition  be  instructed 
that  the  unpleasant  sensations  in  nose  and  throat  are  not 
dangerous  and  involve  no  lasting  disturbance." 

Here  we  have  a  conclusive  proof  that  the  French  in  their 
State  workshops  manufactured  shells  with  asphyxiating 
gases  fully  half  a  year  ago  at  least.  The  number  must  have 
been  so  large  that  the  French  War  Ministry  at  last  found 
itself  obliged  to  issue  written  instructions  concerning  the 
use  of  this  means  of  warfare.  What  hypocrisy  when  the 
same  people  grow  "indignant"  because  the  Germans  much 
later  followed  them  on  the  path  they  had  pointed  out! 
Very  characteristic  is  the  twist  of  the  French  official  di- 
rection :  "The  vapors  spread  by  the  shells  with  asphyxi- 
ating gases  are  not  deadly,  at  least  not  when  used  in  small 
quantities."  It  is  precisely  this  limitation  that  contains  the 
unequivocal  confession  that  the  French  asphyxiating  gases 
work  with  deadly  effect  when  used  in  large  quantities. 

BY   SIR      JOHN   FRENCH 

Headquarters,  June  15,  1915. 
I  much  regret  that  during  the  period  under  report  the 
fighting  has  been  characterized  on  the  enemy's  side  by  a 
cynical  and  barbarous  disregard  of  the  well-known  usages 


140       THE  YPRES  GAS  ATTACK 

of  civilized  war  and  a  flagrant  defiance  of  the  Hague  Con- 
vention. 

All  the  scientific  resources  of  Germany  have  apparently- 
been  brought  into  play  to  produce  a  gas  of  so  virulent  and 
poisonous  a  nature  that  any  human  being  brought  into  con- 
tact with  it  is  first  paralyzed  and  then  meets  with  a  lin- 
gering and  agonizing  death. 

The  enemy  has  invariably  preceded,  prepared  and  sup- 
ported his  attacks  by  a  discharge  in  stupendous  volume  of 
these  poisonous  gas  fumes  whenever  the  wind  was  favor- 
able. 

Such  weather  conditions  have  only  prevailed  to  any  ex- 
tent in  the  neighborhood  of  Ypres,  and  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  effect  of  these  poisonous  fumes  materially 
influenced  the  operations  in  that  theater,  until  experience 
suggested  effective  counter-measures,  which  have  since  been 
so  perfected  as  to  render  them  innocuous. 

The  brain  power  and  thought  which  has  evidently  been 
at  work  before  this  unworthy  method  of  making  war 
reached  the  pitch  of  efficiency  which  has  been  demonstrated 
in  its  practice  shows  that  the  Germans  must  have  harbored 
these  designs  for  a  long  time. 

As  a  soldier  I  cannot  help  expressing  the  deepest  regret 
and  some  surprise  that  an  Army  which  hitherto  has  claimed 
to  be  the  chief  exponent  of  the  chivalry  of  war  should  have 
stooped  to  employ  such  devices  against  brave  and  gallant 
foes. 

It  was  at  the  commencement  of  the  second  battle  of 
Ypres  on  the  evening  of  April  22nd  that  the  enemy  first 
made  use  of  asphyxiating  gas. 

Some  days  previously  I  had  complied  with  General 
Joffre's  request  to  take  over  the  trenches  occupied  by  the 
French,  and  on  the  evening  of  the  22nd  the  troops  holding 
the  lines  east  of  Ypres  were  posted  as  follows : 

From  Steenstraate  to  the  east  of  Langemarck,  as  far  as 
the  Poelcappelle  Road,  a  French  Division.  Thence,  in  a 
southeasterly  direction  toward  the  Passchendaele-Becelaere 
Road,  the  Canadian  Division.  Thence  a  Division  took  up 
the  line  in  a  southerly  direction  east  of  Zonnebeke  to  a 


■F 


Jnqm-  flsa  no 


il  baton  A 

i  to 


r 


A 


e^tftiited  Defense 

,   British   and   Belgians 
to  hold  the  Germans 


, 


at  Amienju — te   ~~Jy 


A  noted  French  Crayon  called  the  "Rampart 
of  Amiens"  by  Z-ucien  Jonas 


THE  YPRES  GAS  ATTACK  141 

point  west  of  Becelaere,  whence  another  Division  continued 
the  line  southeast  to  the  northern  limit  of  the  Corps  on  its 
right. 

Of  the  5th  Corps  there  were  four  battalions  in  Di- 
visional Reserve  about  Ypres;  the  Canadian  Division  had 
one  battalion  of  Divisional  Reserve  and  the  1st  Canadian 
Brigade  in  Army  Reserve.  An  Infantry  Brigade,  which 
had  just  been  withdrawn  after  suffering  heavy  losses  on 
Hill  60,  was  resting  about  Vlamernighe. 

Following  a  heavy  bombardment,  the  enemy  attacked 
the  French  Division  at  about  5  p.  m.,  using  asphyxiating 
gases  for  the  first  time.  Aircraft  reported  that  at  about 
5  p.  m.  thick  yellow  smoke  had  been  seen  issuing  from  the 
German  trenches  between  Langemarck  and  Bixschoote. 
The  French  reported  that  two  simultaneous  attacks  had 
been  made  east  of  the  Ypres-Staden  Railway,  in  which  these 
asphyxiating  gases  had  been  employed. 

What  follows  almost  defies  description.  The  effect  of 
these  poisonous  gases  was  so  virulent  as  to  render  the  whole 
of  the  line  held  by  the  French  Division  mentioned  above 
practically  incapable  of  any  action  at  all.  It  was  at  first  im- 
possible for  any  one  to  realize  what  had  actually  happened. 
The  smoke  and  fumes  hid  everything  from  sight,  and  hun- 
dreds of  men  were  thrown  into  a  comatose  or  dying  con- 
dition, and  within  an  hour  the  whole  position  had  to  be 
abandoned,  together  with  about  fifty  guns. 

I  wish  particularly  to  repudiate  any  idea  of  attaching 
the  least  blame  to  the  French  Division  for  this  unfortunate 
incident. 

After  all  the  examples  our  gallant  Allies  have  shown 
of  dogged  and  tenacious  courage  in  the  many  trying  situa- 
tions in  which  they  have  been  placed  throughout  the  course 
of  this  campaign  it  is  quite  superfluous  for  me  to  dwell  on 
this  aspect  of  the  incident,  and  I  would  only  express  my  firm 
conviction  that,  if  any  troops  in  the  world  had  been  able 
to  hold  their  trenches  in  the  face  of  such  a  treacherous  and 
altogether  unexpected  onslaught,  the  French  Division  would 
have  stood  firm. 

The  left  flank  of  the  Canadian  Division  was  thus  left 


142       THE  YPRES  GAS  ATTACK 

dangerously  exposed  to  serious  attack  in  flank,  and  there 
appeared  to  be  a  prospect  of  their  being  overwhelmed  and 
of  a  successful  attempt  by  the  Germans  to  cut  off  the  Brit- 
ish troops  occupying  the  salient  to  the  East. 

In  spite  of  the  danger  to  which  they  were  exposed  the 
Canadians  held  their  ground  with  a  magnificent  display  of 
tenacity  and  courage ;  and  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the 
bearing  and  conduct  of  these  splendid  troops  averted  a 
disaster  which  might  have  been  attended  with  the  most  seri- 
ous consequences. 

They  were  supported  with  great  promptitude  by  the 
reserves  of  the  divisions  holding  the  salient  and  by  a  bri- 
gade which  had  been  resting  in  billets. 

Throughout  the  night  the  enemy's  attacks  were  repulsed, 
effective  counter-attacks  were  delivered,  and  at  length  touch 
was  gained  with  the  French  right,  and  a  new  line  was 
formed. 

The  2nd  London  Heavy  Battery,  which  had  been  at- 
tached to  the  Canadian  Division,  was  posted  behind  tlw 
right  of  the  French  Division,  and,  being  involved  in  their 
retreat,  fell  into  the  enemy's  hands.  It  was  recaptured  by 
the  Canadians  in  their  counter-attack,  but  the  guns  could  not 
be  withdrawn  before  the  Canadians  were  again  driven  back. 

During  the  night  I  directed  the  Cavalry  Corps  and  the 
Northumbrian  Division,  which  was  then  in  general  reserve, 
to  move  to  the  west  of  Ypres,  and  placed  these  troops  at  the 
disposal  of  the  General  Officer  Commanding  the  Second 
Army.  I  also  directed  other  reserve  troops  from  the  3rd 
Corps  and  the  First  Army  to  be  held  in  readiness  to  meet 
eventualities. 

In  the  confusion  of  the  gas  and  smoke  the  Germans 
succeeded  in  capturing  the  bridge  at  Steenstraate  and  some 
works  south  of  Lizerne,  all  of  which  were  in  occupation  by 
the  French. 

The  enemy  having  thus  established  himself  to  the  west 
of  the  Ypres  Canal,  I  was  somewhat  apprehensive  of  his 
succeeding  in  driving  a  wedge  between  the  French  and  Bel- 
gian troops  at  this  point.  I  directed,  therefore,  that  some 
of  the  reinforcements  sent  north  should  be  used  to  sup- 


THE  YPRES  GAS  ATTACK  143 

port  and  assist  General  Putz,  should  he  find  difficulty  in 
preventing  any  further  advance  of  the  Germans  west  of  the 
canal. 

At  about  ten  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  the  23rd,  con- 
nection was  finally  insured  between  the  left  of  the  Canadian 
Division  and  the  French  right,  about  800  yards  east  of  the 
canal;  but  as  this  entailed  the  maintenance  by  the  British 
troops  of  a  much  longer  line  than  that  which  they  had  held 
before  the  attack  commenced  on  the  previous  night,  there 
were  no  reserves  available  for  counter-attack  until  rein- 
forcements, which  were  ordered  up  from  the  Second  Army, 
were  able  to  deploy  to  the  east  of  Ypres. 

Early  on  the  morning  of  the  23rd  I  went  to  see  General 
Foch,  and  from  him  I  received  a  detailed  account  of  what 
had  happened,  as  reported  by  General  Putz.  General  Foch 
informed  me  that  it  was  his  intention  to  make  good  the 
original  line  and  regain  the  trenches  which  the  French  Di- 
vision had  lost.  He  expressed  the  desire  that  I  should  main- 
tain my  present  line,  assuring  me  that  the  original  position 
would  be  reestablished  in  a  few  days.  General  Foch  fur- 
ther informed  me  that  he  had  ordered  up  large  French  re- 
enforcements,  which  were  now  on  their  way,  and  that  troops 
from  the  North  had  already  arrived  to  reenforce  General 
Putz. 

I  fully  concurred  in  the  wisdom  of  the  General's  wish 
to  reestablish  our  old  line,  and  agreed  to  cooperate  in  the 
way  he  desired,  stipulating,  however,  that  if  the  position 
was  not  reestablished  within  a  limited  time  I  could  not  allow 
the  British  troops  to  remain  in  so  exposed  a  situation  as  that 
which  the  action  of  the  previous  twenty-four  hours  had 
compelled  them  to  occupy. 

During  the  whole  of  the  23rd  the  enemy's  artillery  was 
very  active,  and  his  attacks  all  along  the  front  were  sup- 
ported by  some  heavy  guns  which  had  been  brought  down 
from  the  coast  in  the  neighborhood  of  Ostend. 

The  loss  of  the  guns  on  the  night  of  the  22nd  prevented 
this  fire  from  being  kept  down,  and  much  aggravated  the 
situation.  Our  positions,  however,  were  well  maintained 
by  the  vigorous  counter-attacks  made  by  the  5th  Corps. 


144       THE  YPRES  GAS  ATTACK 

During  the  day  I  directed  two  brigades  of  the  3rd  Corps, 
and  the  Lahore  Division  of  the  Indian  Corps,  to  be  moved 
up  to  the  Ypres  area  and  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  Sec- 
ond Army. 

In  the  course  of  these  two  or  three  days  many  circum- 
stances combined  to  render  the  situation  east  of  the  Ypres 
Canal  very  critical  and  most  difficult  to  deal  with. 

The  confusion  caused  by  the  sudden  retirement  of  the 
French  Division,  and  the  necessity  for  closing  up  the  gap 
and  checking  the  enemy's  advance  at  all  costs,  led  to  a  mix- 
ing up  of  units  and  a  sudden  shifting  of  the  areas  of  com- 
mand, which  was  quite  unavoidable.  Fresh  units,  as  they 
came  up  from  the  South,  had  to  be  pushed  into  the  firing 
line  in  an  area  swept  by  artillery  fire,  which,  owing  to  the 
capture  of  the  French  guns,  we  were  unable  to  keep  down. 

All  this  led  to  very  heavy  casualties,  and  I  wish  to  place 
on  record  the  deep  admiration  which  I  feel  for  the  resource 
and  presence  of  mind  evinced  by  the  leaders  actually  on  the 
spot. 

The  parts  taken  by  Major-General  Snow  and  Brigadier- 
General  Hull  were  reported  to  me  as  being  particularly 
marked  in  this  respect. 

An  instance  of  this  occurred  on  the  afternoon  of  the 
24th,  when  the  enemy  succeeded  in  breaking  through  the 
line  at  St.  Julien. 

Brigadier-General  Hull,  acting  under  the  orders  of  Lieu- 
tenant-General  Alderson,  organized  a  powerful  counter-at- 
tack with  his  own  brigade  and  some  of  the  nearest  available 
units.  He  was  called  upon  to  control,  with  only  his  brigade 
staff,  parts  of  battalions  from  six  separate  divisions  which 
were  quite  new  to  the  ground.  Although  the  attack  did  not 
succeed  in  retaking  St.  Julien,  it  effectually  checked  the 
enemy's  further  advance. 

It  was  only  on  the  morning  of  the  25th  that  the  enemy 
were  able  to  force  back  the  left  of  the  Canadian  Division 
from  the  point  where  it  had  originally  joined  the  French 
line. 

During  the  night,  and  the  early  morning  of  the  25th, 
the  enemy  directed  a  heavy  attack  against  the  Division  at 


THE  YPRES  GAS  ATTACK  145 

Broodseinde  cross-roads,  which  was  supported  by  a  power- 
ful shell  fire,  but  he  failed  to  make  any  progress. 

During  the  whole  of  this  time  the  town  of  Ypres  and 
all  the  roads  to  the  East  and  West  were  uninterruptedly 
subjected  to  a  violent  artillery  fire,  but  in  spite  of  this  the 
supply  of  both  food  and  ammunition  was  maintained 
throughout  with  order  and  efficiency. 

During  the  afternoon  of  the  25th  many  German  prison- 
ers were  taken,  including  some  officers.  The  hand-to-hand 
fighting  was  very  severe,  and  the  enemy  suffered  heavy 
loss. 

During  the  26th  the  Lahore  Division  and  a  Cavalry  Di- 
vision were  pushed  up  into  the  fighting  line,  the  former  on 
the  right  of  the  French,  the  latter  in  support  of  the  5th 
Corps. 

In  the  afternoon  the  Lahore  Division,  in  conjunction 
with  the  French  right,  succeeded  in  pushing  the  enemy  back 
some  little  distance  toward  the  north,  but  their  further  ad- 
vance was  stopped  owing  to  the  continual  employment  by 
the  enemy  of  asphyxiating  gas. 

On  the  right  of  the  Lahore  Division  the  Northumber- 
land Infantry  Brigade  advanced  against  St.  Julien  and  actu- 
ally succeeded  in  entering,  and  for  a  time  occupying,  the 
southern  portion  of  that  village.  They  were,  however, 
eventually  driven  back,  largely  owing  to  gas,  and  finally 
occupied  a  line  a  short  way  to  the  south.  This  attack  was 
most  successfully  and  gallantly  led  by  Brigadier-General 
Riddell,  who,  I  regret  to  say,  was  killed  during  the  progress 
of  the  operation. 

Although  no  attack  was  made  on  the  southeastern  side 
of  the  salient,  the  troops  operating  to  the  east  of  Ypres 
were  subjected  to  heavy  artillery  fire  from  this  direction, 
which  took  some  of  the  battalions,  which  were  advancing 
north  to  the  attack,  in  reverse. 

Some  gallant  attempts  made  by  the  Lahore  Division  on 
the  27th,  in  conjunction  with  the  French,  pushed  the  enemy 
further  north;  but  they  were  partially  frustrated  by  the 
constant  fumes  of  gas  to  which  they  were  exposed.     In 

w.,  vol.  in.— 10. 


146       THE  YPRES  GAS  ATTACK 

spite  of  this,  however,  a  certain  amount  of  ground  was 
gained. 

The  French  succeeded  in  retaking  Lizerne,  and  made 
some  progress  at  Steenstraate  and  Het  Sas ;  but  no  further 
progress  was  made  toward  the  recapture  of  the  original  line. 

THE  COMING  OF  THE  GAS  UPON  THE  FRENCH  DESCRIBED  BY  A 

BRITISH  EYE-WITNESS 

Utterly  unprepared  for  what  was  to  come,  the  [French] 
divisions  gazed  for  a  short  while  spellbound  at  the  strange 
phenomenon  they  saw  coming  slowly  toward  them.  Like 
some  liquid  the  heavy-colored  vapor  poured  relentlessly 
into  the  trenches,  filled  them,  and  passed  on.  For  a  few  sec- 
onds nothing  happened;  the  sweet-smelling  stuff  merely 
tickled  their  nostrils;  they  failed  to  realize  the  danger. 
Then,  with  inconceivable  rapidity,  the  gas  woiked,  and 
blind  panic  spread.  Hundreds,  after  a  dreadful  fight  for 
air,  became  unconscious  and  died  where  they  lay — a  death 
of  hideous  torture,  with  the  frothing  bubbles  gurgling  in 
their  throats  and  the  foul  liquid  welling  up  in  their  lungs. 
With  blackened  faces  and  twisted  limbs  one  by  one  they 
drowned — only  that  which  drowned  them  came  from  inside 
and  not  from  out.  Others,  staggering,  falling,  lurching  on, 
and  of  their  ignorance  keeping  pace  with  the  gas,  went  back. 
A  hail  of  rifle  fire  and  shrapnel  mowed  them  down,  and 
the  line  was  broken.  There  was  nothing  on  the  British  left 
— their  flank  was  up  in  the  air.  The  northeast  corner  of 
the  salient  around  Ypres  had  been  pierced.  From  in  front 
of  St.  Julien  away  up  north  toward  Boesinghe  there  was 
no  one  in  front  of  the  Germans. 

BY  SIR  MAX  AITKEN 

The  battle  which  raged  for  so  many  days  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Ypres  was  bloody,  even  as  men  appraise  battles 
in  this  callous  and  life-engulfing  war.  But  as  long  as  brave 
deeds  retain  the  power  to  fire  the  blood  of  Anglo-Saxons, 
the  stand  made  by  the  Canadians  in  those  desperate  days 
will  be  told  by  fathers  to  their  sons ;  for  in  the  military  rec- 
ords of  Canada  this  defense  will  shine  as  brightly  as,  in  the 


THE  YPRES  GAS  ATTACK  147 

records  of  the  British  Army,  the  stubborn  valor  with  which 
Sir  James  Macdonnel  and  the  Guards  beat  back  from 
Hougoumont  the  Division  of  Foy  and  the  Army  Corps  of 
Reille. 

The  Canadians  wrested  from  the  trenches,  over  the 
bodies  of  the  dead  and  maimed,  the  right  to  stand  side  by 
side  with  the  superb  troops  who,  in  the  first  battle  of  Ypres, 
broke  and  drove  before  them  the  flower  of  the  Prussian 
Guards. 

Looked  at  from  any  point,  the  performance  would  be 
remarkable.  It  is  amazing  to  soldiers,  when  the  genesis  and 
composition  of  the  Canadian  Division  are  considered.  It 
contained,  no  doubt,  a  sprinkling  of  South  African  vet- 
erans, but  it  consisted  in  the  main  of  men  who  were  ad- 
mirable raw  material,  but  who  at  the  outbreak  of  war  were 
neither  disciplined  nor  trained,  as  men  count  discipline  and 
training  in  these  days  of  scientific  warfare. 

It  was,  it  is  true,  commanded  by  a  distinguished  Eng- 
lish general.  Its  staff  was  supplemented,  without  being  re- 
placed, by  some  brilliant  British  staff  officers.  But  in  its 
higher  and  regimental  commands  were  to  be  found  lawyers, 
college  professors,  business  men,  and  real  estate  agents, 
ready  with  cool  self-confidence  to  do  battle  against  an  or- 
ganization in  which  the  study  of  military  science  is  the  ex- 
clusive pursuit  of  laborious  lives.  With  what  devotion, 
with  a  valor  how  desperate,  with  resourcefulness  how  cool 
and  how  fruitful,  the  amateur  soldiers  of  Canada  con- 
fronted overwhelming  odds  may,  perhaps,  be  made  clear 
even  by  a  narrative  so  incomplete  as  this. 

The  salient  of  Ypres  has  become  familiar  to  all  students 
of  the  campaign  in  Flanders.  Like  all  salients,  it  was,  and 
was  known  to  be,  a  source  of  weakness  to  the  forces  holding 
it;  but  the  reasons  which  have  led  to  its  retention  are  ap- 
parent, and  need  not  be  explained. 

On  April  22nd  the  Canadian  Division  held  a  line  of, 
roughly,  five  thousand  yards,  extending  in  a  northwesterly 
direction  from  the  Ypres-Roulers  railway  to  the  Ypres- 
Poelcappelle  road,  and  connecting  at  its  terminus  with  the 
French  troops.     The  Division  consisted  of  three  infantry 


148       THE  YPRES  GAS  ATTACK 

brigades,  in  addition  to  the  artillery  brigades.  Of  the  in- 
fantry brigades  the  first  was  in  reserve,  the  second  was  on 
the  right,  and  the  third  established  contact  with  the  Allies 
at  the  point  indicated  above. 

The  day  was  a  peaceful  one,  warm  and  sunny,  and 
except  that  the  previous  day  had  witnessed  a  further  bom- 
bardment of  the  stricken  town  of  Ypres,1  everything  seemed 
quiet  in  front  of  the  Canadian  line.  At  five  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon  a  plan,  carefully  prepared,  was  put  into  execution 
against  our  French  allies  on  the  left.  Asphyxiating  gas  of 
great  intensity  was  projected  into  their  trenches,  probably 
by  means  of  force  pumps  and  pipes  laid  out  under  the 
parapets. 

The  fumes,  aided  by  a  favorable  wind,  floated  back- 
wards, poisoning  and  disabling  over  an  extended  area  those 
who  fell  under  their  effects.  The  result  was  that  the  French 
were  compelled  to  give  ground  for  a  considerable  distance.2 
The  glory  which  the  French  Army  has  won  in  this  war 
would  make  it  impertinent  to  assert  the  compelling  nature 
of  the  poisonous  discharges  ander  which  the  trenches  were 
lost.     The  French  did,  as  every  one  knew  they  would,  all 

*The  great  bombardment  of  Ypres  began  on  April  20th,  when  the 
first  42  centimeter  shell  fell  into  the  Grand  Place  of  the  little  Flemish 
city.  The  only  military  purpose  which  the  wanton  destruction  of 
Ypres  could  serve  was  the  blocking  of  our  supply  trains,  and  on  the 
first  day  alone  15  children  were  killed  as  they  were  playing  in  the 
streets,  while  many  other  civilians  perished  in  the  ruined  houses. 

2  The  French  troops,  largely  made  up  of  Turcos  and  Zouaves, 
surged  wildly  back  over  the  canal  and  through  the  village  of  Vlamer- 
tinghe  just  at  dark.  The  Canadian  reserve  battalions  (of  the  1st 
Brigade)  were  amazed  at  the  anguished  faces  of  many  of  the  French 
soldiers,  twisted  and  distorted  by  pain,  who  were  gasping  for  breath 
and  vainly  trying  to  gain  relief  by  vomiting.  Traffic  in  the  main 
streets  of  the  village  was  demoralized,  and  gun-carriages  and  ammu- 
nition wagons  added  to  the  confusion. 

The  chaos  in  the  main  streets  of  the  village  was  such  that  any 
coherent  movement  of  troops  was,  for  the  moment,  impossible ;  gun- 
carriages  and  ammunition  wagons  were  inextricably  mixed,  while  gal- 
loping gun-teams  without  their  guns  were  careering  wildly  in  all 
directions.  When  order  had  been  to  some  extent  restored,  Staff  Offi- 
cers learned  from  fugitives  who  were  in  a  condition  to  speak  that 
the  Algerians  had  left  thousands  of  their  comrades  dead  and  dying 
along  the  four-mile  gap  in  our  Ally's  lines  through  which  the  Germans 
were  pouring  behind  their  gas. 


THE  YPRES  GAS  ATTACK  149 

that  stout  soldiers  could,  and  the  Canadian  Division,  offi- 
cers and  men,  look  forward  to  many  occasions  in  the  future 
in  which  they  will  stand  side  by  side  with  the  brave  armies 
of  France. 

The  immediate  consequences  of  this  enforced  with- 
drawal were,  of  course,  extremely  grave.  The  3rd  Brigade 
of  the  Canadian  Division  was  without  any  left,  or,  in  other 
words,  its  left  was  "in  the  air." 

It  becaroe  imperatively  necessary  greatly  to  extend  the 
Canadian  lines  to  the  left  rear.  It  was  not,  of  course,  prac- 
ticable to  move  the  1st  Brigade  from  reserve  at  a  moment's 
notice,  and  the  line,  extended  from  5,000  to  9,000  yards, 
was  naturally  not  the  line  that  had  been  held  by  the  Allies 
at  five  o'clock,  and  a  gap  still  existed  on  its  left.  The  new 
line,  of  which  our  recent  point  of  contact  with  the  French 
formed  the  apex,  ran,  quite  roughly,  from  there  southwest 
to  the  wood  of  St.  Julien. 

As  shown  above,  it  became  necessary  for  Brigadier-Gen- 
eral Turner  (now  Major-General),  commanding  the  3rd 
Brigade,  to  throw  back  his  left  flank  southward,  to  protect 
his  rear.  In  the  course  of  the  confusion  which  followed  on 
the  readjustment  of  the  position,  the  enemy,  who  had  ad- 
vanced rapidly  after  his  initial  successes,  took  four  Brit- 
ish 4.7  guns,  lent  by  the  2nd  London  Division  to  support  the 
French,  in  a  small  wood  to  the  west  of  the  village  of  St. 
Julien,  two  miles  in  the  rear  of  the  original  French  trenches. 

The  story  of  the  second  battle  of  Ypres  is  the  story  of 
how  the  Canadian  Division,  enormously  outnumbered — 
for  they  had  in  front  of  them  at  least  four  divisions,  sup- 
ported by  immensely  heavy  artillery — with  a  gap  still  ex- 
isting, though  reduced,  in  their  lines,  and  with  dispositions 
made  hurriedly  under  the  stimulus  of  critical  danger,  fought 
through  the  day  and  through  the  night,  and  then  through 
another  day  and  night;  fought  under  their  officers  until, 
as  happened  to  so  many,  these  perished  gloriously,  and  then 
fought  from  the  impulsion  of  sheer  valor  because  they  came 
from  fighting  stock. 

The  enemy,  of  course,  was  aware — whether  fully  or  not 
may  perhaps  be  doubted — of  the  advantage  his  breach  in  the 


150       THE  YPRES  GAS  ATTACK 

line  had  given  him,  and  immediately  began  to  push  a  formid- 
able series  of  attacks  on  the  whole  of  the  newly-formed 
Canadian  salient.  If  it  is  possible  to  distinguish,  when  the 
attack  was  everywhere  so  fierce,  it  developed  with  particular 
intensity  at  this  moment  on  the  apex  of  the  newly-formed 
line  running  in  the  direction  of  St.  Julien. 

It  has  already  been  stated  that  four  British  guns  were 
taken  in  a  wood  comparatively  early  in  the  evening  of  April 
22nd.  The  General  Officer  Commanding  the  Canadian  Di- 
vision had  no  intention  of  allowing  the  enemy  to  retain  pos- 
session of  either  the  wood  or  the  guns  without  a  desperate 
struggle,  and  he  ordered  a  counter-attack  towards  the  wood 
to  be  made  by  the  3rd  Infantry  Brigade  under  General 
Turner. 

The  assault  upon  the  wood  was  launched  shortly  after 
midnight  of  April  22nd-23rd  by  the  10th  Battalion  and 
1 6th  (Canadian  Scottish)  Battalion,  respectively  com- 
manded by  Lieut-Colonel  Boyle  and  Lieut-Colonel  (now 
Brigadier-General)  R.  G.  E.  Leckie.  The  advance  was 
made  under  the  heaviest  machine  gun  and  rifle  fire,  the  wood 
was  reached,  and,  after  a  desperate  struggle  by  the  light  of 
a  misty  moon,  they  took  the  position  at  the  point  of  the 
bayonet. 

An  officer  who  took  part  in  the  attack  describes  how  the 
men  about  him  fell  under  the  fire  of  the  machine  guns, 
which,  in  his  phrase,  played  upon  them  "like  a  watering 
pot."  He  added  quite  simply,  "I  wrote  my  own  life  off." 
But  the  line  never  wavered. 

When  one  man  fell  another  took  his  place,  and,  with 
a  final  shout,  the  survivors  of  the  two  Battalions  flung 
themselves  into  the  wood.  The  German  garrison  was  com- 
pletely demoralized,  and  the  impetuous  advance  of  the  Ca- 
nadians did  not  cease  until  they  reached  the  far  side  of  the 
wood  and  entrenched  themselves  there  in  the  position  so 
dearly  gained.  They  had,  however,  the  disappointment  of 
finding  that  the  guns  had  been  destroyed  by  the  enemy,  and 
later  in  the  same  night,  a  most  formidable  concentration  of 
artillery  fire,  sweeping  the  wood  as  a  tropical  storm  sweeps 
the  leaves  from  the  trees  of  a  forest,  made  it  impossible  for 


THE  YPRES  GAS  ATTACK  151 

them  to  hold  the  position  for  which  they  had  sacrificed 
so  much. 

Within  a  few  hours  of  this  attack,  the  10th  Canadian 
Battalion  was  again  ordered  to  advance  by  Lieut.-Colonel 
Boyle,  late  a  rancher  in  the  neighborhood  of  Calgary.  The 
assault  was  made  upon  a  German  trench  which  was  being 
hastily  constructed  within  two  hundred  yards  of  the  Bat- 
talion's right  front.  Machine  gun  and  rifle  fire  opened  upon 
the  Battalion  at  the  moment  the  charge  was  begun,  and 
Colonel  Boyle  fell  almost  instantly  with  his  left  thigh  pierced 
in  five  places.  Major  MacLaren,  his  second  in  command, 
was  also  wounded  at  this  time. 

The  fighting  continued  without  intermission  all  through 
the  night  of  April  22nd-23rd,  and  to  those  who  observed 
the  indications  that  the  attack  was  being  pushed  with  ever- 
growing strength,  it  hardly  seemed  possible  that  the  Ca- 
nadians, fighting  in  positions  so  difficult  to  defend  and  so 
little  the  subject  of  deliberate  choice,  could  maintain  their 
resistance  for  any  long  period. 

Reinforcements  of  British  troops,  commanded  by 
Colonel  Geddes,  of  the  Buffs,  began  to  arrive  in  the  gap 
early  on  Friday  morning.  At  6  a.  m.  on  Friday,  the  2nd 
Canadian  Brigade  was  still  intact,  but  the  3rd  Canadian 
Brigade,  on  the  left,  was  bent  back  upon  St.  Julien.  It 
became  apparent  that  the  left  was  becoming  more  and  more 
involved,  and  a  powerful  German  attempt  to  outflank  it 
developed  rapidly.  The  consequences,  if  it  had  been  broken 
or  outflanked,  need  not  be  insisted  upon.  They  would  not 
have  been  merely  local. 

It  was  therefore  decided,  formidable  as  the  attempt  un- 
doubtedly was,  to  try  to  give  relief  by  a  counter-attack  upon 
the  first  line  of  German  trenches,  now  far,  far  advanced 
from  those  originally  occupied  by  the  French.  The  attack 
was  carried  out  at  6.30  a.  m.  by  the  1st  (Ontario)  Bat- 
talion and  the  4th  Battalion  of  the  1st  Brigade,  under  Brig- 
adier-General Mercer,  acting  with  Geddes'  Detachment. 
The  4th  Battalion  was  in  advance  and  the  1st  in  support, 
under  the  covering  fire  of  the  1st  Canadian  Artillery  Bri- 
gade. 


152       THE  YPRES  GAS  ATTACK 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  youngest  private  in  the  ranks, 
as  he  set  his  teeth  for  the  advance,  knew  the  task  in  front 
of  him,  and  the  youngest  subaltern  knew  all  that  rested  on 
its  success.  It  did  not  seem  that  any  human  being  could  live 
in  the  shower  of  shot  and  shell  which  began  to  play  upon 
the  advancing  troops. 

They  suffered  terrible  casualties.  For  a  short  time  every 
other  man  seemed  to  fall,  but  the  attack  was  pressed  ever 
closer  and  closer.  The  4th  Canadian  Battalion  at  one  mo- 
ment came  under  a  particularly  withering  fire.  For  a  mo- 
ment— not  more — it  wavered.  Its  most  gallant  Command- 
ing Officer,  Lieut.-Colonel  Birchall,  carrying,  after  an  old 
fashion,  a  light  cane,  coolly  and  cheerfully  rallied  his  men, 
and  at  the  very  moment  when  his  example  had  infected 
them,  fell  dead  at  the  head  of  his  Battalion.  With  a  hoarse 
cry  of  anger  they  sprang  forward  (for,  indeed,  they  loved 
him)  as  if  to  avenge  his  death. 

The  astonishing  attack  which  followed,  pushed  home 
in  the  face  of  direct  frontal  fire,  made  in  broad  daylight 
by  battalions  whose  names  should  live  forever  in  the  memo- 
ries of  soldiers,  was  carried  to  the  first  line  of  the  German 
trenches.  After  a  hand-to-hand  struggle,  the  last  German 
who  resisted  was  bayoneted,  and  the  trench  was  won. 

The  measure  of  our  success  may  be  taken  when  it  is 
pointed  out  that  this  trench  represented,  in  the  German  ad- 
vance, the  apex  in  the  breach  which  the  enemy  had  made 
in  the  original  line  of  the  Allies,  and  that  it  was  two  and 
a  half  miles  south  of  that  line.  This  charge,  made  by  men 
who  looked  death  indifferently  in  the  face — for  no  man  who 
took  part  in  it  could  think  that  he  was  likely  to  live — saved, 
and  that  was  much,  the  Canadian  left.    But  it  did  more. 

Up  to  the  point  where  the  assailants  conquered,  or  died, 
it  secured  and  maintained  during  the  most  critical  moment 
of  all,  the  integrity  of  the  Allied  line.  For  the  trench  was 
not  only  taken — it  was  held  thereafter  against  all  comers,' 
and  in  the  teeth  of  every  conceivable  projectile,  until  the 
night  of  Sunday,  April  25th,  when  all  that  remained  of  the 
war-broken  but  victorious  battalions  was  relieved  by  fresh 
troops. 


THE  YPRES  GAS  ATTACK  153 

Although  the  gas  fumes  were  extremely  poisonous,  they 
were  not,  perhaps,  having  regard  to  the  wind,  so  disabling 
as  on  the  French  lines  (which  ran  almost  east  to  west),  and 
the  Canadians,  though  affected  by  the  fumes,  stoutly  beat 
back  the  two  German  assaults.  Encouraged  by  this  success, 
they  rose  to  the  supreme  effort  required  by  the  assault  on 
the  wood,  which  has  already  been  described.  At  4  a.  m.  on 
the  morning  of  Friday,  the  23rd,  a  fresh  emission  of  gas 
was  made  both  on  the  2nd  Brigade,  which  held  the  line  run- 
ning northeast,  and  on  the  3rd  Brigade,  which,  as  has  been 
explained,  continued  the  line  up  to  the  pivotal  point  defined 
above,  and  had  there  spread  down  in  a  southeasterly  direc- 
tion. 

The  Royal  Highlanders  of  Montreal,  13th  Battalion, 
and  the  48th  Highlanders,  15th  Battalion,  were  more  espe- 
cially affected  by  the  gas  discharge.  The  Royal  Highland- 
ers, though  considerably  shaken,  remained  immovable  on 
their  ground.  The  48th  Highlanders,  who  no  doubt  re- 
ceived a  more  poisonous  discharge,  were  for  the  moment 
dismayed,  and,  indeed,  their  trench,  according  to  the  tes- 
timony of  very  hardened  soldiers,  became  intolerable.  The 
Battalion  retired  from  the  trench,  but  for  a  very  short  dis- 
tance and  for  a  very  short  time.  In  a  few  moments  they 
were  again  their  own  men.  They  advanced  on  and  reoc- 
cupied  the  trenches  which  they  had  momentarily  abandoned. 


THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES 

THE  LAST  GREAT  CRIME  OF  THE  TURKS 

APRIL-DECEMBER 

LORD  JAMES  BRYCE  DR.  MARTIN  NIEPAGE 

DR.  HARRY  STURMER 

This  most  wholesale  of  all  the  awful  Turkish  massacres  of  the  past 
may,  we  are  confident,  be  called  the  last.  For  surely  never  again  will 
Civilization  sink  to  such  a  depth  of  consciencelessness  as  to  allow  the 
Turks  to  rule  over  any  other  people.  A  Turk  is  not  even  fit  to  rule  a 
Turk. 

These  massacres  began  by  Turkish  Government  command  in  April, 
1915,  and  continued  just  so  long  as  there  remained  any  living  Armeni- 
ans within  Turkish  reach.  As  to  the  German  relationship  to  this  par- 
ticular group  of  horrors,  we  let  Germans  speak  for  their  race.  Dr. 
Niepage  and  Dr.  Sturmer  were  both  German  Government  employees 
in  Turkey,  the  one  a  teacher  in  Asia  Minor,  the  other  a  war-corre- 
spondent and  former  army  officer  in  Constantinople.  Both  recoil  in 
an  agony  of  protest  against  what  they  saw ;  but  it  is  sadly  noteworthy 
that  both  have  to  admit  that  the  mass  of  their  countrymen  in  Turkey 
showed  no  such  emotional  weakness. 

Of  the  torture  and  slaughter  of  over  a  million  people,  it  is  im- 
possible to  give  full  details.  These  two  German  reports  do  but  brush 
the  edge  of  the  immeasurable  foulness.  Its  general  outline  is  there- 
fore given  from  Lord  Bryce's  report  to  the  British  Government,  made 
in  October  of  1915.  James  Bryce,  former  British  Ambassador  to  the 
United  States,  is  a  personage  of  such  world-wide  honor  and  high  re- 
pute both  as  statesman  and  as  man  of  letters  that  his  words  may 
always  be  fully  accepted.  In  this  case  they  are  conservative  under- 
statements of  the  unspeakable  truth.  His  full  report  is  sickening  with 
tales  of  torture  and  of  beastly  lust.  The  blot  upon  Germany  which 
permitted  these  things  to  happen  is  so  black,  so  broad,  that  it  spreads 
out  beyond  Germany  and  falls  with  some  portion  of  its  shame  and  sin 
upon  every  civilized  human  being.  c.  f.  h. 

BY  LORD  BRYCE 

I  AM  grieved  to  say  that  such  information  as  has  reached 
me  from  several  quarters  goes  to  show  that  the  num- 
ber of  those  who  have  perished  in  Armenia  is  very  large. 
It  has  been  estimated  at  the  figure  of  800,000.  Though 
hoping  that  figure  to  be  beyond  the  mark,  I  cannot  venture 

i54 


THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES  155 

to  pronounce  it  incredible,1  for  there  has  been  an  unparal- 
leled destruction  of  life  all  over  the  country  from  the  fron- 
tiers of  Persia  to  the  Sea  of  Marmora,  only  a  very  few  of 
the  cities  of  the  ^gean  coast  having  escaped.  This  is  so, 
because  the  proceedings  taken  have  been  so  carefully  pre- 
meditated and  systematically  carried  out,  with  a  ruthless 
efficiency  previously  unknown  among  the  Turks.  The  mas- 
sacres are  the  result  of  a  policy  which,  as  far  as  can  be 
ascertained,  has  been  entertained  for  some  considerable  time 
by  the  gang  of  unscrupulous  adventurers  in  possession  of 
the  Government  of  the  Turkish  Empire.  They  hesitated 
to  put  it  in  practice  until  they  thought  the  favorable  mo- 
ment had  come,  and  that  moment  seems  to  have  arrived 
about  the  month  of  April,  191 5.  That  was  the  time  when 
these  orders  were  issued,  orders  which  came  down  in  every 
case  from  Constantinople,  and  which  the  officials  found 
themselves  obliged  to  carry  out  on  pain  of  dismissal. 

There  was  no  Moslem  passion  against  the  Armenian 
Christians.  All  was  done  by  the  will  of  the  Government, 
and  done  not  from  any  religious  fanaticism,  but  simply  be- 
cause they  wished,  for  reasons  purely  political,  to  get  rid 
of  a  non-Moslem  element  which  impaired  the  homogeneity 
of  the  Empire,  and  constituted  an  element  that  might  not 
always  submit  to  oppression.  All  that  I  have  learned  con- 
firms what  has  already  been  said  elsewhere,  that  there  is  no 
reason  to  believe  that  in  this  case  Musulman  fanaticism 
came  into  play  at  all.  So  far  as  can  be  made  out,  though  of 
course  the  baser  natures  have  welcomed  and  used  the  op- 
portunities for  plunder  which  slaughter  and  deportations 
afford,  these  massacres  have  been  viewed  by  the  better  sort 
of  religious  Moslems  with  horror  rather  than  with  sympa- 
thy. It  would  be  too  much  to  say  that  they  have  often 
attempted  to  interfere,  but  at  any  rate  they  do  not  seem  to 
have  shown  approval  of  the  conduct  of  the  Turkish  Govern- 
ment. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  precepts  of  Islam  which  justifies 
the  slaughter  which  has  been  perpetrated.     I  am  told  on 

1  Later  statistics  carry  this  grim  figure  above  a  million. 


156  THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES 

good  authority  that  high  Moslem  religious  authorities  con- 
demned the  massacres  ordered  by  Abdul  Hamid,  and  these 
are  far  more  atrocious.  In  some  cases  the  governors,  being 
pious  and  humane  men,  refused  to  execute  the  orders  that 
had  reached  them,  and  endeavored  to  give  what  protection 
they  could  to  the  unfortunate  Armenians.  In  two  cases  I 
have  heard  of  the  governors  being  immediately  dismissed 
for  refusing  to  obey  the  orders.  Others  more  pliant  were 
substituted,  and  the  massacres  were  carried  out. 

As  I  have  said,  the  procedure  was  exceedingly  system- 
atic. The  whole  Armenian  population  of  each  town  or 
village  was  cleared  out,  by  a  house-to-house  search.  Every 
inmate  was  driven  into  the  street.  Some  of  the  men  were 
thrown  into  prison,  where  they  were  put  to  death,  sometimes 
with  torture;  the  rest  of  the  men,  with  the  women  and 
children,  were  marched  out  of  the  town.  When  they  had 
got  some  little  distance  they  were  separated,  the  men  being 
taken  to  some  place  among  the  hills,  where  the  soldiers,  or 
the  Kurdish  tribes  who  were  called  in  to  help  in  the  work 
of  slaughter,  dispatched  them  by  shooting  or  bayoneting. 
The  women  and  children  and  old  men  were  sent  off  under 
convoy  of  the  lowest  kinds  of  soldiers — many  of  them  just 
drawn  from  gaols — to  their  distant  destination,  which  was 
sometimes  one  of  the  unhealthy  districts  in  the  center  of 
Asia  Minor,  but  more  frequently  the  large  desert  in  the 
province  of  Der  el  Zor,  which  lies  east  of  Aleppo,  in  the 
direction  of  the  Euphrates.  They  were  driven  along  by  the 
soldiers  day  after  day,  all  on  foot,  beaten  or  left  behind 
to  perish  if  they  could  not  keep  up  with  the  caravan;  many 
fell  by  the  way,  and  many  died  of  hunger.  No  provisions 
were  given  them  by  the  Turkish  Government,  and  they  had 
already  been  robbed  of  everything  they  possessed.  Not  a 
few  of  the  women  were  stripped  naked  and  made  to  travel 
in  that  condition  beneath  a  burning  sun.  Some  of  the 
mothers  went  mad  and  threw  away  their  children,  being  un- 
able to  carry  them  further.  The  caravan  route  was  marked 
by  a  line  of  corpses,  and  comparatively  few  seem  to  have 
arrived  at  the  destinations  which  had  been  prescribed  for 
them — chosen,  no  doubt,  because  return  was  impossible  and 


THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES  157 

because  there  was  little  prospect  that  any  would  survive  their 
hardships.  I  have  had  circumstantial  accounts  of  these  de- 
portations which  bear  internal  evidence  of  being  veracious, 
and  I  was  told  by  an  American  friend  who  has  lately  re- 
turned from  Constantinople  that  he  had  heard  accounts  at 
Constantinople  confirming  fully  those  which  had  come  to 
me,  and  that  what  had  struck  him  was  the  comparative 
calmness  with  which  these  atrocities  were  detailed  by  those 
who  had  first-hand  knowledge  of  them.  Things  which  we 
find  scarcely  credible  excite  little  surprise  in  Turkey.  Mas- 
sacre was  the  order  of  the  day  as  in  Eastern  Rumelia  in 
1876,  and,  in  1895-6,  in  Asiatic  Turkey. 

When  the  Armenian  population  was  driven  from  its 
homes,  many  of  the  women  were  not  killed,  but  reserved 
for  a  more  humiliating  fate.  They  were  mostly  seized  by 
Turkish  officers  or  civilian  officials,  and  consigned  to  their 
harems.  Others  were  sold  in  the  market,  but  only  to  a 
Moslem  purchaser,  for  they  were  to  be  made  Moslems  by 
force.  Never  again  would  they  see  parents  or  husbands — 
these  Christian  women  condemned  at  one  stroke  to  slavery, 
shame  and  apostasy.  The  boys  and  girls  were  also  very 
largely  sold  into  slavery,  at  prices  sometimes  of  only  ten  to 
twelve  shillings,  while  other  boys  of  tender  age  were  de- 
livered to  dervishes,  to  be  carried  off  to  a  sort  of  dervish 
monastery,  and  there  forced  to  become  Musulmans. 

To  give  one  instance  of  the  thorough  and  remorseless 
way  in  which  the  massacres  were  carried  out,  it  may  suffice 
to  refer  to  the  case  of  Trebizond,  a  case  vouched  for  by 
the  Italian  Consul  who  was  present  when  the  slaughter  was 
carried  out,  his  country  not  having  then  declared  war 
against  Turkey.  Orders  came  from  Constantinople  that  all 
the  Armenian  Christians  in  Trebizond  were  to  be  killed. 
Many  of  the  Moslems  tried  to  save  their  Christian  neigh- 
bors, and  offered  them  shelter  in  their  houses,  but  the  Turk- 
ish authorities  were  implacable.  Obeying  the  orders  which 
they  had  received,  they  hunted  out  all  the  Christians,  gath- 
ered them  together,  and  drove  a  great  crowd  of  them  down 
the  streets  of  Trebizond,  past  the  fortress,  to  the  edge  of  the 
sea.     There  they  were  all  put  on  board  sailing  boats,  car- 


158  THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES 

ried  out  some  distance  on  the  Black  Sea,  and  there  thrown 
overboard  and  drowned.  Nearly  the  whole  Armenian  popu- 
lation of  from  8,000  to  10,000  were  destroyed — some  in 
this  way,  some  by  slaughter,  some  by  being  sent  to  death 
elsewhere.  After  that,  any  other  story  becomes  credible; 
and  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  all  the  stories  that  I  have  received 
contain  similar  elements  of  horror,  intensified  in  some  cases 
by  stories  of  shocking  torture.  But  the  most  pitiable  case 
is  not  that  of  those  whose  misery  was  ended  by  swift  death, 
but  of  those  unfortunate  women  who,  after  their  husbands 
had  been  killed  and  their  daughters  violated,  were  driven 
out  with  their  young  children  to  perish  in  the  desert — 
where  they  have  no  sustenance,  and  where  they  are  the 
victims  of  the  wild  Arab  tribes  around  them.  It  would  seem 
that  three-fourths  or  four-fifths  of  the  whole  nation  has 
been  wiped  out,  and  there  is  no  case  in  history,  certainly 
not  since  the  time  of  Tamerlane,  in  which  any  crime  so 
hideous  and  upon  so  large  a  scale  has  been  recorded. 

Let  me  add,  because  this  is  of  some  importance  in  view 
of  the  excuses  which  the  German  Government  put  forward, 
and  which  their  Ambassador  in  Washington  is  stated  to  have 
given,  when  he  talked  about  "the  suppression  of  riots,"  for 
the  conduct  of  those  who  were  their  allies,  that  there  is  no 
ground  for  the  suggestion  that  there  had  been  any  rising  on 
the  part  of  the  Armenians.  A  certain  number  of  Armenian 
volunteers  fought  on  the  side  of  the  Russians  in  the  Cau- 
casian Army,  but  they  came  from  the  Armenian  population 
of  Trans-Caucasia.  It  may  be  that  some  few  Armenians 
crossed  the  frontier  in  order  to  fight  alongside  their  Ar- 
menian brethren  in  Trans-Caucasia  for  Russia,  but  at  any 
rate,  the  volunteer  corps  which  rendered  such  brilliant  ser- 
vice to  the  Russian  Army  in  the  first  part  of  the  war  was 
composed  of  Russian  Armenians  living  in  the  Caucasus. 
Wherever  the  Armenians,  almost  wholly  unarmed  as  they 
were,  have  fought,  they  have  fought  in  self-defense  to  de- 
fend their  families  and  themselves  from  the  cruelty  of  the 
ruffians  who  constitute  what  is  called  the  Government  of  the 
country.  There  is  no  excuse  whatever  upon  any  such 
ground  as  some  German  authorities  and  newspapers  allege, 


THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES  159 

for  the  conduct  of  the  Turkish  Government.  Their  policy 
of  slaughter  and  deportation  has  been  wanton  and  unpro- 
voked. It  appears  to  be  simply  an  application  of  the  maxim 
once  enunciated  by  Sultan  Abdul  Hamid :  "The  way  to 
get  rid  of  the  Armenian  question  is  to  get  rid  of  the  Arme- 
nians" ;  and  the  policy  of  extermination  has  been  carried  out 
with  far  more  thoroughness  and  with  far  more  bloodthirsty 
completeness  by  the  present  heads  of  the  Turkish  Admin- 
istration— they  describe  themselves  as  the  Committee  of 
Union  and  Progress^ — than  it  was  in  the  time  of  Abdul 
Hamid. 

Even  if  the  statistics  were  more  abundant  and  more 
eloquent  still,  they  might  fail  to  convey  to  our  imagination 
the  actuality  of  what  has  happened.  A  nation  blotted  out ! 
It  is  easy  to  say  it  with  the  lips,  more  difficult  to  realize  what 
it  means,  for  it  is  something  totally  beyond  our  experience. 
Perhaps  nothing  brings  it  home  more  crushingly  than  the 
record  which  we  have  of  one  little  community  of  sensitive, 
refined  Armenian  people,  and  of  the  terrible  fates  by  which 
they  were  individually  overtaken.  They  were  the  mem- 
bers of  an  educational  establishment  in  a  certain  Anatolian 
town,  which  was  endowed  and  directed  by  a  society  of  for- 
eign missionaries;  and  the  following  is  taken  directly  from 
a  letter  which  was  written  by  the  President  of  the  College 
after  the  blow  had  fallen. 

"I  shall  try  to  banish  from  my  mind  for  the  time  the 
sense  of  great  personal  sorrow  because  of  losing  hundreds 
of  my  friends  here,  and  also  my  sense  of  utter  defeat  in 
being  so  unable  to  stop  the  awful  tragedy  or  even  mitigate 
to  any  degree  its  severity,  and  compel  myself  to  give  you 
concisely  some  of  the  cold  facts  of  the  past  months  as  they 
relate  themselves  to  the  College.  I  do  so  with  the  hope  that 
the  possession  of  these  concrete  facts  may  help  you  to  do 
something  there  for  the  handful  of  dependents  still  left  to 
us  here. 

"(i)  Constituency:  Approximately  two-thirds  of  the 
girl  pupils  and  six-sevenths  of  the  boys  have  been  taken 
away  to  death,  exile  or  Moslem  homes. 

"(ii)  Professors:  Four  gone,  three  left,  as  follows: 


160  THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES 

"Professor  A.,  served  College  35  years.  Professor  of 
Turkish  and  History.  Besides  previous  trouble  arrested 
May  1st  without  charge,  hair  of  head,  mustache  and  beard 
pulled  out  in  vain  effort  to  secure  damaging  confessions. 
Starved  and  hung  by  arms  for  a  day  and  a  night  and  severely 
beaten  several  times.  Taken  out  towards  Diyarbekir  about 
June  20th  and  murdered  in  general  massacre  on  the  road. 

"Professor  B.,  served  College  33  years,  studied  at  Ann 
Arbor.  Professor  of  Mathematics,  arrested  about  June 
5th  and  shared  Professor  A.'s  fate  on  the  road. 

"Professor  C,  taken  to  witness  a  man  beaten  almost  to 
death,  became  mentally  deranged.  Started  with  his  family 
about  July  5th  into  exile  under  guard  and  murdered  beyond 
the  first  big  town  on  the  road.  (Principal  of  Preparatory 
Department,  studied  at  Princeton.)  Served  the  College 
20  years. 

"Professor  D.,  served  College  16  years,  studied  at  Edin- 
burgh, Professor  of  Mental  and  Moral  Science.  Arrested 
with  Professor  A.  and  suffered  same  tortures,  also  had 
three  finger  nails  pulled  out  by  the  roots;  killed  in  same 
massacre. 

"Professor  E.,  served  College  25  years,  arrested  May 
1st,  not  tortured  but  sick  in  prison.  Sent  to  Red  Crescent 
Hospital  and  after  paying  large  bribes  is  now  free. 

"Professor  F.,  served  the  College  for  over  15  years, 
studied  in  Stuttgart  and  Berlin,  Professor  of  Music,  escaped 
arrest  and  torture,  and  thus  far  escaped  exile  and  death 
because  of  favor  with  the  Kaim-makam  secured  by  personal 
services  rendered. 

"Professor  G.,  served  the  College  about  15  years, 
studied  at  Cornell  and  Yale  (M.S.),  Professor  of  Biology, 
arrested  about  June  5th,  beaten  about  the  hands,  body  and 
head  with  a  stick  by  the  Kaim-makam  himself,  who,  when 
tired,  called  on  all  who  loved  religion  and  the  nation  to 
continue  the  beating;  after  a  period  of  insensibility  in  a  dark 
closet,  taken  to  the  Red  Crescent  Hospital  with  a  broken 
finger  and  serious  bruises. 

"(iii)  Instructors,  Male:  Four  reported  killed  on  the 
road  in  various  massacres,  whose  average  term  of  service 


THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES  161 

is  eight  years.  Three  not  heard  from,  probably  killed  on 
the  road,  average  term  of  service  in  the  College  four  years. 

"Two  sick  in  Missionary  Hospital. 

"One  in  exile. 

"One  engaged  in  cabinet  work  for  the  Kaim-makam, 
free. 

"One,  owner  of  house  occupied  by  the  Kaim-makam, 
free. 

"(iv)  Instructors,  Female: 

"One  reported  killed  in  Chunkoosh,  served  the  College 
over  twenty  years. 

"One  reported  taken  to  a  Turkish  harem. 

"Three  not  heard   from. 

"Four  started  out  as  exiles. 

"Ten  free. 

"Of  the  Armenian  people  as  a  whole  we  may  put  an 
estimate  that  three- fourths  are  gone,  and  this  three-fourths 
includes  the  leaders  in  every  walk  of  life,  merchants,  pro- 
fessional men,  preachers,  bishops  and  government  officials. 

"I  have  said  enough.  Our  hearts  are  sick  with  the  sights 
and  stories  of  abject  terror  and  suffering.  The  extermina- 
tion of  the  race  seems  to  be  the  objective,  and  the  means 
employed  are  more  fiendish  than  could  be  concocted  locally. 
The  orders  are  from  headquarters,  and  any  reprieve  must 
be  from  the  same  source." 

BY    DR.    MARTIN    NIEPAGE 

When  I  returned  to  Aleppo  in  September,  191 5,  from  a 
three  months'  holiday  at  Beirout,  I  heard  with  horror  that  a 
new  phase  of  Armenian  massacres  had  begun  which  were 
far  more  terrible  than  the  earlier  massacres  under  Abdul- 
Hamid,  and  which  aimed  at  exterminating,  root  and  branch, 
the  intelligent,  industrious,  and  progressive  Armenian  na- 
tion, and  at  transferring  its  property  to  Turkish  hands. 

Such  monstrous  news  left  me  at  first  incredulous.  I 
was  told  that,  in  various  quarters  of  Aleppo,  there  were 
lying  masses  of  half-starved  people,  the  survivors  of  so- 
called  "deportation  convoys."  In  order,  I  was  told,  to  cover 
the  extermination  of  the  Armenian  nation  with  a  political 

v,r.,  VOL.  III.— 11. 


162  THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES 

cloak,  military  reasons  were  being  put  forward,  which 
were  said  to  make  it  necessary  to  drive  the  Armenians  out 
of  their  native  seats,  which  had  been  theirs  for  2,500  years, 
and  to  deport  them  to  the  Arabian  deserts.  I  was  also  told 
that  individual  Armenians  had  lent  themselves  to  acts  of 
espionage. 

After  I  had  informed  myself  about  the  facts  and  had 
made  inquiries  on  all  sides,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  all 
these  accusations  against  the  Armenians  were,  in  fact,  based 
on  trifling  provocations,  which  were  taken  as  an  excuse 
for  slaughtering  10,000  innocents  for  one  guilty  person,  for 
the  most  savage  outrages  against  women  and  children,  and 
for  a  campaign  of  starvation  against  the  exiles  which  was 
intended  to  exterminate  the  whole  nation. 

To  test  the  conclusion  derived  from  my  information, 
I  visited  all  the  places  in  the  city  where  there  were  Ar- 
menians left  behind  by  the  convoys.  In  dilapidated  caravan- 
saries (hans)  I  found  quantities  of  dead,  many  corpses 
being  half-decomposed,  and  others,  still  living,  among  them, 
who  were  soon  to  breathe  their  last.  In  other  yards  I  found 
quantities  of  sick  and  starving  people  whom  no  one  was 
looking  after.  In  the  neighborhood  of  the  German  Tech- 
nical School,  at  which  I  am  employed  as  a  higher  grade 
teacher,  there  were  four  such  hans,  with  seven  or  eight  hun- 
dred exiles  dying  of  starvation.  We  teachers  and  our  pupils 
had  to  pass  by  them  every  day.  Every  time  we  went  out  we 
saw  through  the  open  windows  their  pitiful  forms,  emaci- 
ated and  wrapped  in  rags.  In  the  mornings  our  school- 
children, on  their  way  through  the  narrow  streets,  had  to 
push  past  the  two-wheeled  ox-carts,  on  which  every  day 
from  eight  to  ten  rigid  corpses,  without  coffin  or  shroud, 
were  carried  away,  their  arms  and  legs  trailing  out  of  the 
vehicle. 

After  I  had  shared  this  spectacle  for  several  days  I 
thought  it  my  duty  to  compose  the  following  report : 

"As  teachers  in  the  German  Technical  School  at  Aleppo, 
we  permit  ourselves  with  all  respect  to  make  the  following 
report : 

"We  feel  it  our  duty  to  draw  attention  to  the  fact  that 


THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES  163 

our  educational  work  will  forfeit  its  moral  basis  and  the 
esteem  of  the  natives,  if  the  German  Government  is  not  in 
a  position  to  put  a  stop  to  the  brutality  with  which  the 
wives  and  children  of  slaughtered  Armenians  are  being 
treated  here. 

"Out  of  convoys  which,  when  they  left  their  homes  on 
the  Armenian  plateau,  numbered  from  two  to  three  thou- 
sand men,  women  and  children,  only  two  or  three  hundred 
survivors  arrive  here  in  the  south.  The  men  are  slaugh- 
tered on  the  way;  the  women  and  girls,  with  the  exception 
of  the  old,  the  ugly  and  those  who  are  still  children,  have 
been  abused  by  Turkish  soldiers  and  officers  and  then  car- 
ried away  to  Turkish  and  Kurdish  villages,  where  they 
have  to  accept  Islam.  They  try  to  destroy  the  remnant  of 
the  convoys  by  hunger  and  thirst.  Even  when  they  are 
fording  rivers,  they  do  not  allow  those  dying  of  thirst  to 
drink.  All  the  nourishment  they  receive  is  a  daily  ration 
of  a  little  meal  sprinkled  over  their  hands,  which  they  lick 
off  greedily,  and  its  only  effect  is  to  protract  their  starvation. 

"Opposite  the  German  Technical  School  at  Aleppo,  in 
which  we  are  engaged  in  teaching,  a  mass  of  about  four 
hundred  emaciated  forms,  the  remnant  of  such  convoys,  is 
lying  in  one  of  the  hans.  There  are  about  a  hundred  chil- 
dren (boys  and  girls)  among  them,  from  five  to  seven  years 
old.  Most  of  them  are  suffering  from  typhoid  and  dysen- 
tery. When  one  enters  the  yard,  one  has  the  impression  of 
entering  a  mad-house.  If  one  brings  them  food,  one  no- 
tices that  they  have  forgotten  how  to  eat.  Their  stomach, 
weakened  by  months  of  starvation,  can  no  longer  assimilate 
nourishment.  If  one  gives  them  bread,  they  put  it  aside 
indifferently.  They  just  lie  there  quietly,  waiting  for 
death. 

"Amid  such  surroundings,  how  are  we  teachers  to  read 
German  Fairy  Stories  with  our  children,  or,  indeed,  the 
story  of  the  Good  Samaritan  in  the  Bible?  How  are  we 
to  make  them  decline  and  conjugate  irrelevant  words,  while 
round  them  in  the  yards  adjoining  the  German  Technical 
School  their  starving  fellow-countrymen  are  slowly  suc- 
cumbing?   Under  such  circumstances  our  educational  work 


1 64  THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES 

flies  in  the  face  of  all  true  morality  and  becomes  a  mockery 
of  human  sympathy. 

"And  what  becomes  of  these  poor  people  who  have 
been  driven  in  thousands  through  Aleppo  and  the  neigh- 
borhood into  the  deserts,  reduced  almost  entirely,  by  this 
time,  to  women  and  children?  They  are  driven  on  and  on 
from  one  place  to  another.  The  thousands  shrink  to  hun- 
dreds and  the  hundreds  to  tiny  remnants,  and  even  these 
remnants  are  driven  on  till  the  last  is  dead.  Then  at  last 
they  have  reached  the  goal  of  their  wandering,  the  'New 
Homes  assigned  to  the  Armenians,'  as  the  newspapers 
phrase  it. 

"  'Ta'alim  el  alcman  ('the  teaching  of  the  Germans')  is 
the  simple  Turk's  explanation  to  every  one  who  asks  him 
about  the  originators  of  these  measures. 

"The  educated  Moslems  are  convinced  that,  even  though 
the  German  nation  discountenances  such  horrors,  the  Ger- 
man Government  is  taking  no  steps  to  put  a  stop  to  them, 
out  of  consideration  for  its  Turkish  Ally. 

"Mohammedans,  too,  of  more  sensitive  feelings — Turks 
and  Arabs  alike — shake  their  heads  in  disapproval  and  do 
not  conceal  their  tears  when  they  see  a  convoy  of  exiles 
marching  through  the  city,  and  Turkish  soldiers  using  cud- 
gels upon  women  in  advanced  pregnancy  and  upon  dying 
people  who  can  no  longer  drag  themselves  along.  They 
cannot  believe  that  their  Government  has  ordered  these 
atrocities,  and  they  hold  the  Germans  responsible  for  all 
such  outrages,  Germany  being  considered  during  the  war  as 
Turkey's  schoolmaster  in  everything.  Even  the  mollahs  in 
the  mosques  say  that  it  was  not  the  Sublime  Porte  but  the 
German  officers  who  ordered  the  ill-treatment  and  destruc- 
tion of  the  Armenians. 

"The  things  which  have  been  passing  here  for  months 
under  everybody's  eyes  will  certainly  remain  as  a  stain  on 
Germany's  shield  in  the  memory  of  Orientals. 

"In  order  not  to  be  obliged  to  give  up  their  faith  in  the 
character  of  the  Germans,  which  they  have  hitherto  re- 
spected, many  educated  Mohammedans  explain  the  situa- 
tion to  themselves  as  follows:     'The  German  nation,'  they 


THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES  165 

say,  'probably  knows  nothing  about  the  frightful  massacres 
which  are  on  foot  at  the  present  time  against  the  native 
Christians  in  all  parts  of  Turkey.  Knowing  the  German 
love  of  truth,  how  otherwise  can  we  explain  the  articles  we 
read  in  German  newspapers,  which  appear  to  know  of  noth- 
ing except  that  individual  Armenians  have  been  deservedly 
shot  by  martial  law  as  spies  and  traitors?'  Others  again 
say :  'Perhaps  the  German  Government  has  had  its  hands 
tied  by  some  treaty  defining  its  powers,  or  perhaps  inter- 
vention is  inopportune  for  the  moment.' 

"I  know  for  a  fact  that  the  Embassy  at  Constanti- 
nople has  been  informed  by  the  German  Consulates  of  all 
that  has  been  happening.  As,  however,  there  has  not  been 
so  far  the  least  change  in  the  system  of  deportation,  I  feel 
myself  compelled  by  conscience  to  make  my  present  report." 

At  the  time  when  I  composed  this  report,  the  German 
Consul  at  Aleppo  was  represented  by  his  colleague  from 
Alexandretta — Consul  Hoffmann.  Consul  Hoffmann  in- 
formed me  that  the  German  Embassy  had  been  advised  in 
detail  about  the  events  in  the  interior  in  repeated  reports 
from  the  Consulates  at  Alexandretta,  Aleppo  and  Mosul. 
He  told  me  that  a  report  of  what  I  had  seen  with  my  own 
eyes  would,  however,  be  welcome  as  a  supplement  to  these 
official  documents  and  as  a  description  in  detail.  He  said 
he  would  convey  my  report  to  the  Embassy  at  Constanti- 
nople by  a  sure  agency.  I  now  worked  out  a  report  on  the 
desired  lines,  giving  an  exact  description  of  the  state  of 
things  in  the  han  opposite  our  school. 

Consul  Hoffmann  wished  to  add  some  photographs 
which  he  had  taken  in  the  han  himself.  The  photographs 
displayed  piles  of  corpses,  among  which  children  still  alive 
were  crawling  about. 

In  its  revised  form  the  report  was  signed  by  my  col- 
league, Dr.  Graeter  (higher  grade  teacher),  and  by  Frau 
Marie  Spiecker,  as  well  as  by  myself.  The  head  of  our 
institution,  Director  Huber,  also  placed  his  name  to  it  and 
added  a  few  words  in  the  following  sense :  "My  colleague 
Dr.  Niepage's  report  is  not  at  all  exaggerated.  For  weeks 
we  have  been  living  here  in  an  atmosphere  poisoned  with 


1 66  THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES 

sickness  and  the  stench  of  corpses.  Only  the  hope  of  speedy 
relief  makes  it  possible  for  us  to  carry  on  our  work." 

The  relief  did  not  come.  I  then  thought  of  resigning 
my  post  as  higher  grade  teacher  in  the  Technical  School, 
on  the  ground  that  it  was  senseless  and  morally  unjustifi- 
able to  be  a  representative  of  European  civilization  with 
the  task  of  bringing  moral  and  intellectual  education  to  a 
nation  if,  at  the  same  time,  one  had  to  look  on  passively 
while  the  Government  of  the  country  was  abandoning  one's 
pupils'  fellow-countrymen  to  an  agonizing  death  by  starva- 
tion. 

Those  around  me,  however,  as  well  as  the  head  of  our 
institution,  Director  Huber,  dissuaded  me  from  my  inten- 
tion. It  was  pointed  out  to  me  that  tliere  was  value  in  our 
continued  presence  in  the  country,  as  eye-witnesses  of  what 
went  on.  Perhaps,  it  was  suggested,  our  presence  might 
have  some  effect  in  making  the  Turks  behave  more  hu- 
manely towards  their  unfortunate  victims,  out  of  considera- 
tion for  us  Germans.  I  see  now  that  I  have  remained  far 
too  long  a  silent  witness  of  all  this  wickedness. 

Our  presence  had  no  ameliorating  effect  whatever,  and 
what  we  could  do  personally  came  to  little.  Frau  Spiecker, 
our  brave,  energetic  colleague,  bought  soap,  and  all  the 
women  and  children  in  our  neighborhood  who  were  still 
alive — there  were  no  men  left — were  washed  and  cleansed 
from  lice.  Frau  Spiecker  set  women  to  work  to  make  soup 
for  those  who  could  still  assimilate  nourishment.  I,  my- 
self, distributed  two  pails  of  tea  and  cheese  and  moistened 
bread  among  the  dying  children  every  evening  for  six 
weeks;  but  when  the  Hunger-Typhus  or  Spotted-Typhus 
spread  through  the  city  from  these  charnel  houses,  six  of  us 
succumbed  to  it  and  had  to  give  up  our  relief  work.  Indeed, 
for  the  exiles  who  came  to  Aleppo,  help  was  really  useless. 
We  "could  only  afford  those  doomed  to  death  a  few  slight 
alleviations  of  their  death  agony. 

What  we  saw  with  our  own  eyes  here  in  Aleppo  was 
really  only  the  last  scene  in  the  great  tragedy  of  the  ex- 
termination of  the  Armenians.  It  was  only  a  minute  frac- 
tion of  the  horrible  drama  that  was  being  played  out  simul- 


THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES  167 

taneously  in  all  the  other  provinces  of  Turkey.  Many  more 
appalling  things  were  reported  by  the  engineers  of  the  Bag- 
dad Railway,  when  they  came  back  from  their  work  on  the 
section  under  construction,  or  by  German  travelers  who  met 
the  convoys  of  exiles  on  their  journeys.  Many  of  these 
gentlemen  had  seen  such  appalling  sights  that  they  could 
eat  nothing  for  days. 

One  of  them,  Herr  Greif,  of  Aleppo,  reported  corpses 
of  violated  women  lying  about  naked  in  heaps  on  the  rail- 
way embankment  at  Tell-Abiad  and  Ras-el-Ain.  Another, 
Herr  Spiecker,  of  Aleppo,  had  seen  Turks  tie  Armenian 
men  together,  fire  several  volleys  of  small  shot  with  fowling- 
pieces  into  the  human  mass,  and  go  off  laughing  while  their 
victims  slowly  perished  in  frightful  convulsions.  Other 
men  had  their  hands  tied  behind  their  back  and  were  rolled 
down  steep  cliffs.  Women  were  standing  below,  who 
slashed  those  who  had  rolled  down  with  knives  until  they 
were  dead.  A  Protestant  pastor  who,  two  years  before,  had 
given  a  very  warm  welcome  to  my  colleague,  Doctor  Grae- 
ter,  when  he  was  passing  through  his  village,  had  his  finger 
nails  torn  out. 

The  German  Consul  from  Mosul  related,  in  my  presence, 
at  the  German  club  at  Aleppo  that,  in  many  places  on  the 
road  from  Mosul  to  Aleppo,  he  had  seen  children's  hands 
lying  hacked  off  in  such  numbers  that  one  could  have  paved 
the  road  with  them.  In  the  German  hospital  at  Ourfa  there 
was  a  little  girl  who  had  had  both  her  hands  hacked  off. 

In  an  Arab  village  on  the  way  to  Aleppo  Herr  Hol- 
stein,  the  German  Consul  from  Mosul,  saw  shallow  graves 
with  freshly-buried  Armenian  corpses.  The  Arabs  of  the 
village  declared  that  they  had  killed  these  Armenians  by 
the  Government's  orders.  One  asserted  proudly  that  he  per- 
sonally had  killed  eight. 

In  many  Christian  houses  in  Aleppo  I  found  Armenian 
girls  hidden  who  by  some  chance  had  escaped  death ;  either 
they  had  been  left  lying  exhausted  and  had  been  taken  for 
dead  when  their  companions  had  been  driven  on,  or,  in 
other  cases,  Europeans  had  found  an  opportunity  to  buy 
the  poor  creatures  for  a  few  marks  from  the  last  Turkish 


1 68  THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES 

soldier  who  had  violated  them.  All  these  girls  showed 
symptoms  of  mental  derangement;  many  of  them  had  had 
to  watch  the  Turks  cut  their  parents'  throats.  I  know  poor 
things  who  have  not  had  a  single  word  coaxed  out  of  them 
for  months,  and  not  a  smile  to  this  moment.  A  girl  about 
fourteen  years  old  was  given  shelter  by  Herr  Krause,  Depot 
Manager  for  the  Bagdad  Railway  at  Aleppo.  The  girl  had 
been  so  many  times  ravished  by  Turkish  soldiers  in  one  night 
that  she  had  completely  lost  her  reason.  I  saw  her  tossing 
on  her  pillow  in  delirium  with  burning  lips,  and  could  hardly 
get  water  down  her  throat. 

A  German  I  know  saw  hundreds  of  Christian  peasant 
women  who  were  compelled,  near  Ourfa,  to  strip  naked  by 
the  Turkish  soldiers.  For  the  amusement  of  the  soldiers 
they  had  to  drag  themselves  through  the  desert  in  this  con- 
dition for  days  together  in  a  temperature  of  400  Centigrade, 
until  their  skins  were  completely  scorched.  Another  witness 
saw  a  Turk  tear  a  child  out  of  its  Armenian  mother's 
womb  and  hurl  it  against  the  wall. 

There  are  other  occurrences,  worse  than  these  few  ex- 
amples which  I  give  here,  recorded  in  the  numerous  reports 
which  have  been  sent  in  to  the  Embassy  from  the  German 
Consulates  at  Alexandretta,  Aleppo  and  Mosul.  The  Con- 
suls are  of  opinion  that,  so  far,  probably  about  one  million 
Armenians  have  perished  in  the  massacres  of  the  last  few 
months.  Of  this  number,  one  must  reckon  that  at  least 
half  are  women  and  children  who  have  either  been  mur- 
dered or  have  succumbed  to  starvation. 

It  is  a  duty  of  conscience  to  bring  these  things  into  pub- 
licity, and,  although  the  Turkish  Government,  in  destroy- 
ing the  Armenian  nation,  may  only  be  pursuing  objects  of 
internal  policy,  the  way  this  policy  is  being  carried  out  has 
many  of  the  characteristics  of  a  general  persecution  of 
Christians. 

All  the  tens  of  thousands  of  girls  and  women  who  have 
been  carried  off  into  Turkish  harems,  and  the  masses  of 
children  who  have  been  collected  by  the  Government  and 
distributed  among  the  Turks  and  Kurds,  are  lost  to  Chris- 


THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES  169 

tendom,  and  have  to  accept  Islam.  The  abusive  epithet 
"giaour"  is  now  heard  once  again  by  German  ears. 

At  Adana  I  saw  a  crowd  of  Armenian  orphans  march- 
ing through  the  streets  under  a  guard  of  Turkish  soldiers; 
their  parents  have  been  slaughtered  and  the  children  have 
to  become  Mohammedans.  Everywhere  there  have  been 
cases  in  which  adult  Armenians  were  able  to  save  their  lives 
by  readiness  to  accept  Islam.  Sometimes,  however,  the 
Turkish  officials  first  made  the  Christians  present  a  petition 
to  be  received  into  the  communion  of  Islam,  and  then  an- 
swered very  grandly,  in  order  to  throw  dust  in  the  eyes  of 
Europeans,  that  religion  is  not  a  thing  to  play  with.  These 
officials  preferred  to  have  the  petitioners  killed.  Men  like 
Talaat  Bey  and  Enver  Pasha,  when  prominent  Armenians 
brought  them  presents,  often  tempered  their  thanks  with 
the  remark  that  they  would  have  been  still  better  pleased  if 
the  Armenian  givers  had  made  their  presents  as  Mohamme- 
dans. A  newspaper  reporter  was  told  by  one  of  these  gen- 
tlemen :  "Certainly  we  are  now  punishing  many  innocent 
people  as  well.  But  we  have  to  guard  ourselves  even  against 
those  who  may  one  day  become  guilty."  On  such  grounds 
Turkish  statesmen  justify  the  wholesale  slaughter  of  de- 
fenseless women  and  children.  A  German  Catholic  ecclesi- 
astic reported  that  Enver  Pasha  declared,  in  the  presence  of 
Monsignore  Dolci,  the  Papal  Envoy  at  Constantinople,  that 
he  would  not  rest  so  long  as  a  single  Armenian  remained 
alive. 

The  object  of  the  deportations  is  the  extermination  of 
the  whole  Armenian  nation.  This  purpose  is  also  proved 
by  the  fact  that  the  Turkish  Government  declines  all  as- 
sistance from  Missionaries,  Sisters  of  Mercy  and  European 
residents  in  the  country,  and  systematically  tries  to  stop  their 
work.  A  Swiss  engineer  was  to  have  been  brought  before 
a  court-martial  because  he  had  distributed  bread  in  Anatolia 
to  the  starving  Armenian  women  and  children  in  a  convoy 
of  exiles.  The  Government  has  not  hesitated  even  to  de- 
port Armenian  pupils  and  teachers  from  the  German  schools 
at  Adana  and  Aleppo,  and  Armenian  children  from  the 
German  orphanages,  without  regard  to  all  the  efforts  of 


i;o  THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES 

the  Consuls  and  the  heads  of  the  institutions  involved.  The 
Government  also  rejected  the  American  Government's  offer 
to  take  the  exiles  to  America  on  American  ships  and  at 
America's  expense. 

The  opinion  of  our  German  Consuls  and  of  many  for- 
eigners resident  in  the  country  about  the  Armenian  massa- 
cres will  some  day  become  known  through  their  reports. 
I  can  say  nothing  about  the  verdict  of  the  German  officers  in 
Turkey.  I  often  noticed,  when  in  their  company,  an  omi- 
nous silence  or  a  convulsive  effort  to  change  the  subject 
when  any  German  of  warm  sympathies  and  independent 
judgment  began  to  speak  about  the  Armenians'  frightful 
sufferings. 

When  Field  Marshal  von  der  Goltz  was  traveling  to 
Bagdad  and  had  to  cross  the  Euphrates  at  Djerablus,  there 
was  a  large  encampment  of  half-starved  Armenian  exiles 
there.  Just  before  the  Field  Marshal's  arrival,  so  I  was 
told  at  Djerablus,  these  unhappy  people,  the  sick  and  dying 
with  the  rest,  were  driven  under  the  whip  several  kilometers 
away  over  the  nearest  hills.  When  von  der  Goltz  passed 
through,  there  were  no  traces  left  of  the  repulsive  spectacle; 
but  when  I  visited  the  place  shortly  afterwards  with  some 
of  my  colleagues,  we  found  corpses  of  men,  women  and 
children  still  lying  in  out-of-the-way  places,  and  fragments 
of  clothes,  skulls  and  bones  which  had  been  partly  stripped 
of  the  flesh  by  jackals  and  birds  of  prey. 

The  author  of  the  present  report  considers  it  out  of  the 
question  that,  if  the  German  Government  is  seriously  de- 
termined to  stem  the  tide  of  destruction  even  at  this  eleventh 
hour,  it  would  find  it  impossible  to  bring  the  Turkish  Gov- 
ernment to  reason.  If  the  Turks  are  really  so  well  inclined 
to  us  Germans  as  people  say,  cannot  they  have  it  pointed  out 
to  them  how  seriously  they  compromise  us  before  the  whole 
civilized  world,  if  we,  as  their  allies,  have  to  look  on  pas- 
sively while  our  fellow-Christians  in  Turkey  are  slaugh- 
tered in  their  hundreds  of  thousands,  their  women  and 
daughters  violated,  their  children  brought  up  as  Mohamme- 
dans ?  Cannot  the  Turks  be  made  to  understand  that  their 
barbarities  are  reckoned  to  our  account,  and  that  we  Ger- 


THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES  171 

mans  will  be  accused  either  of  criminal  complicity  or  of  con- 
temptible weakness,  if  we  shut  our  eyes  to  the  frightful 
horrors  which  this  war  has  produced,  and  seek  to  pass  over 
in  silence  facts  which  are  already  notorious  all  over  the 
world?  If  the  Turks  are  really  as  intelligent  as  is  said, 
should  it  be  impossible  to  convince  them  that,  in  exterminat- 
ing the  Christian  nations  in  Turkey,  they  are  destroying 
the  productive  factors  and  the  intermediaries  of  European 
trade  and  general  civilization?  If  the  Turks  are  as  far- 
sighted  as  is  said,  can  they  blind  themselves  to  the  danger 
that,  when  the  civilized  States  of  Europe  have  taken  cog- 
nizance of  what  has  been  happening  in  Turkey  during  the 
war,  they  may  be  driven  to  the  conclusion  that  Turkey  has 
forfeited  the  right  to  govern  herself  and  has  destroyed  once 
for  all  any  belief  in  her  tolerance  and  capacity  for  civili- 
zation? Will  not  the  German  Government  be  standing  for 
what  is  best  in  Turkey's  own  interest,  if  it  hinders  Turkey 
from  ruining  herself  morally  and  economically  ? 

In  this  report  I  hope  to  reach  the  Government's  ear 
through  the  accredited  representatives  of  the  German  na- 
tion. 

When  the  Reichstag  sits  in  Committee,  these  things  must 
no  longer  be  passed  over,  however  painful  they  are.  Noth- 
ing could  put  us  more  to  shame  than  the  erection  at  Con- 
stantinople of  a  Turco-German  palace  of  friendship  at  huge 
expense,  while  we  are  not  in  a  position  to  shield  our  fellow- 
Christians  from  barbarities  unparalleled  even  in  the  blood- 
stained history  of  Turkey.  .  .  . 

Even  apart  from  our  common  duty  as  Christians,  we 
Germans  are  under  a  special  obligation  to  stop  the  complete 
extermination  of  the  half-million  Armenian  Christians  who 
still  survive.  We  are  Turkey's  allies  and,  after  the  elimina- 
tion of  the  French,  English  and  Russians,  we  are  the  only 
foreigners  who  have  any  say  in  Turkish  affairs.  We  may 
indignantly  refute  the  lies  of  our  enemies  abroad,  who  say 
that  the  massacres  have  been  organized  by  German  Con- 
suls. We  shall  not  be  able  to  dissipate  the  Turkish  nation's 
conviction  that  the  Armenian  massacres  were  ordered  by 
Germany,  unless  energetic  steps  are  at  last  taken  by  German 


172  THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES 

diplomatists  and  officers.  And  even  if  we  cleared  ourselves 
of  everything  but  the  one  reproach  that  our  timidity  and 
weakness  in  dealing  with  our  ally  had  prevented  us  from 
saving  half  a  million  women  and  children  from  slaughter 
or  death  by  starvation,  the  image  of  the  German  War  would 
be  disfigured  for  all  time  in  the  mirror  of  history  by  a  hide- 
ous feature. 

It  is  utterly  erroneous  to  think  that  the  Turkish  Gov- 
ernment will  refrain  of  its  own  accord  even  from  the  de- 
struction of  the  women  and  children,  unless  the  strongest 
pressure  is  exercised  by  the  German  Government.  Only  just 
before  I  left  Aleppo,  in  May,  1916,  the  crowds  of  exiles 
encamped  at  Ras-el-Ain  on  the  Bagdad  Railway,  estimated 
at  20,000  women  and  children,  were  slaughtered  to  the  last 
one. 

BY  DR.   HARRY  STURMER 

I  have  spoken  to  Armenians  who  said  to  me :  "Formerly 
Sultan  Abdul  Hamid  massacred  us  from  time  to  time  by 
thousands.  At  stated  intervals,  in  regular  pogroms,  we 
were  turned  over  to  the  knives  of  the  Kurds,  and  certainly 
suffered  terribly.  After  that  the  Young  Turks,  at  Adana, 
in  1909,  showed  they,  too,  could  shed  the  blood  of  thou- 
sands of  us.  But  since  our  present  sufferings,  rest  assured 
we  look  with  longing  back  upon  the  massacres  perpetrated 
under  the  old  regime.  Now  we  have  to  complain  not  of  a 
definite  number  of  murdered  people;  now  our  whole  race  is 
slowly  but  surely  being  exterminated  by  the  chauvinistic 
hatred  of  an  apparently  civilized,  apparently  modern,  but, 
for  that  very  reason,  terribly  dangerous  Government.  Now 
they  are  taking  our  women  and  children,  who  die  on  those 
long  wearisome  trips  on  foot  that  they  have  to  make  while 
being  deported,  or  in  the  concentration  camps  without  any- 
thing to  eat.  The  few  pitiful  survivors  of  our  people  in  the 
villages  and  cities  of  the  interior,  where  the  local  authori- 
ties eagerly  carry  out  the  Central  Government's  orders,  are 
then  forcibly  converted  to  Islamism,  and  our  young  girls 
are  put  into  harems  and  houses  of  prostitution. 

"Now  that  the  Young  Turks  find  themselves  bleeding 


THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES  173 

white  in  a  disastrous  war,  they  are  trying  to  right  the  bal- 
ance of  the  races  and  permanently  establish  themselves  as 
the  predominant  element  in  the  country.  That  is  why  these 
are  not  merely  abortive  outbreaks,  but  calculated  political 
measures  against  our  people ;  and  therefore  we  can  hope  for 
no  mercy.  Since  Germany,  weak  and  conscienceless,  per- 
mits our  extermination,  if  the  war  lasts  much  longer  the  Ar- 
menian people  will  simply  cease  to  exist.  And  so  we  now 
look  back  with  regret  to  Abdul  Hamid's  times,  terrible  as 
they  were." 

Was  there  ever  any  more  terrific  tragedy  in  the  history 
of  a  race?  And  this  was  a  race  quite  free  of  all  illusions 
of  nationalism,  cognizant  that  it  would  be  helpless  crowded 
in  between  two  great  nations.  The  Armenians  had  felt  no 
real  impulse  toward  Russia  until  the  Young  Turks,  whose 
comrades  they  had  been  in  revolt  against  Abdul  Hamid, 
foully  betrayed  them.  They  had  been  completely  loyal  to 
their  Osmanli  citizenship,  more  so  than  any  other  element 
of  the  empire,  with  the  exception  of  the  Turks  themselves. 

I  believe  I  have  in  these  few  paragraphs  sufficiently 
characterized  the  spirit  animating  this  policy  of  extermina- 
tion, as  well  as  its  results.  I  only  wish  to  put  in  evidence 
one  more  incident,  which  affected  me  most  because  it  was  a 
matter  of  personal  experience. 

One  summer's  day  in  1916  [in  Constantinople],  at  about 
noon,  my  wife  went  alone  to  the  Grand  Rue  de  Pera  to 
do  some  shopping.  We  lived  only  a  few  steps  from  Galata 
Serai,  and  daily  could  see  the  troops  of  unhappy  Armenians 
enter  the  police  station  under  escort  of  the  gendarmes. 
Eventually  you  get  hardened  even  to  such  sad  sights  and 
come  to  regard  them  not  as  individual  but  as  political  mis- 
fortunes. But  this  time  my  wife  returned  after  a  few  min- 
utes, all  a-tremble.  She  hadn't  been  able  to  go  on.  As  she 
passed  the  "Caracol"  she  heard  the  sound  of  some  one  being 
tortured,  muffled  groans  as  of  some  animal  in  agony,  half 
dead  of  pain.  "An  Armenian,"  was  what  a  person  standing 
at  the  entrance  of  the  building  told  her.  At  that  moment 
the  crowd  was  driven  away  by  a  policeman. 

"If  such  things  can  be  done  in  the  bright  light  of  day 


174  THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES 

in  the  busiest  part  of  the  European  city  of  Pera,  then  I 
wonder  what  they  do  to  the  poor  Armenians  in  the  unciv- 
ilized districts  of  the  interior?"  asked  my  wife.  "If  the 
Turks  behave  like  wild  beasts  here  in  the  capital,  so  that  a 
woman  can't  go  into  the  main  street  without  meeting  with 
this  kind  of  terrible  shock,  then  I  can't  go  on  living  in  this 
fearsome  country." 

Then  she  gave  utterance  to  her  boundless  indignation 
at  what,  for  more  than  a  year,  she  had  seen  whenever  we 
went  out  on  to  the  streets :  "You  are  brutes,  contemptible 
brutes,  you  Germans,  to  allow  the  Turks  to  do  this.  You 
have  the  country  absolutely  in  hand.  Cowardly  brutes  you 
are,  and  I'm  never  going  to  set  foot  in  your  accursed  land 
again." 

At  the  moment  when  my  wife,  in  her  sorrow,  indigna- 
tion, and  disgust  at  such  cowardice,  broke  out  into  tears 
and  flung  at  me  her  curse  against  my  country,  at  that  mo- 
ment I  mentally  tore  the  ties  that  bound  me  to  Germany. 
Truly,  I  had  known  enough  for  a  long  time. 

I  remembered  the  conversations  I  had  had  with  gen- 
tlemen from  the  German  Embassy  in  Constantinople,  and 
also  with  the  American  Ambassador,  Morgenthau,  about 
the  Armenian  question.  I  had  never  believed  in  the  as- 
surances, given  out  by  the  German  Embassy,  that  it,  the 
German  Embassy,  had  done  everything  possible  to  stop  the 
murderous  persecutions  of  harmless  Armenians,  a  long  dis- 
tance away  from  the  front,  who,  from  their  very  nature  and 
social  position,  were  in  no  position  to  meddle  with  political 
matters.  I  equally  distrusted  the  German  Embassy's  as- 
sertion that  it  had  done  all  it  could  to  prevent  the  deported 
women  and  children — deported,  no  doubt,  for  that  very 
purpose — from  being  allowed  to  perish.  On  the  contrary, 
I  gathered  the  impression  that  the  German  Government's 
conduct  in  the  Armenian  matter  was  controlled  by  a  mixture 
of  motives — on  the  one  hand,  cowardice  and  lack  of  con- 
science; on  the  other,  by  shortsighted  stupidity. 

The  American  Ambassador,  who  warmly  espoused  the 
Armenian  cause,  naturally  preserved  a  good  deal  cf  reserve 
when  talking  to  a  German  journalist  like  myself,  and  would 


THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES  175 

not  give  his  real  opinion  of  the  conduct  of  his  German  col- 
league. Nevertheless,  in  my  many  conversations  with  this 
sympathetic  person,  who  has  done  so  much  for  humanity  in 
Turkey,  I  heard  nothing  which  would  tend  to  destroy  my 
impression  of  the  German  Embassy's  conduct,  and  yet  I 
gave  some  indication  of  my  impression  during  my  conversa- 
tions with  Mr.  Morgenthau. 

Germany's  attitude  gave  evidence  of  the  most  shameless 
cowardice,  I  have  said.  We  certainly  had  sufficient  control 
of  the  Turkish  Government  in  military,  financial,  and  po- 
litical matters  to  be  able  at  least  to  force  it  to  observe  the 
most  elementary  rules  of  humanity. 

I  can't  help  imagining  that,  in  spite  of  pretty  official 
speeches,  which  I  often  heard  at  the  German  Embassy  about 
the  Armenian  problem,  the  diplomats  at  bottom  had  very 
little  interest  in  the  salvation  of  this  people.  How  do  I 
come  to  make  such  a  frightful  charge?  I  was  often  at  the 
German  Embassy  when  the  Armenian  Patriarch,  after  some 
particularly  terrible  attack  upon  his  people,  came  with  tears 
in  his  eyes,  and  begged  for  help.  And  I  never  could  discern 
anything  in  the  excited  hurryings  hither  and  thither  of  our 
diplomats  except  anxiety  to  preserve  German  prestige  and 
wounded  vanity,  but  never  a  worry  for  the  fate  of  the  Ar- 
menian people.  I,  time  and  again,  heard  from  German  lips 
from  all  sorts  of  individuals,  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest, 
expressions  of  hatred,  based  on  absolute  misunderstanding 
of  the  facts,  against  the  Armenians,  unconsidered  repeti- 
tions of  the  official  Turkish  publications. 

And,  unfortunately,  the  fact  has  been  established  by 
nurses  and  doctors  returning  from  the  interior  that  German 
officers,  more  eager  than  some  of  the  Turkish  officials  of 
local  districts,  who  hated  to  carry  out  the  instructions  of  the 
Committee  of  Union  and  Progress,  light-heartedly  took  part 
in  the  extermination  and  expulsion  of  the  Armenians.  A 
well-known  instance,  and  one  sufficiently  established  by 
proof,  was  that  of  two  traveling  German  officers  who  came 
to  a  little  village  in  further  Asia  Minor,  where  some  Arme- 
nians had  taken  refuge  in  the  interior  of  a  house,  refusing 
to  be  driven  away  like  animals.     Guns  had  been  placed  in 


176  THE  ARMENIAN  MASSACRES 

position  to  drive  them  out  of  their  shelter.  But  no  Turks 
were  to  be  found  with  the  courage  to  carry  out  orders  and 
fire  on  women  and  children.  These  German  officers,  then, 
without  any  orders,  took  up  the  matter  as  a  sporting  affair, 
and  seized  the  occasion  to  show  their  skill  in  artillery  prac- 
tice. Certainly  such  shameful  occurrences  were  not  taking 
place  daily,  but  they  exactly  fit  in  with  the  spirit  which  in- 
spired the  utterances  of  dozens  of  highly  educated,  highly 
placed  Germans — not  military  people — with  regard  to  the 
Armenians. 

Just  such  a  case  of  criminal  interference  by  military  per- 
sons, in  the  interior  of  Anatolia,  was  officially  brought  to 
the  attention  of  the  embassy.  At  that  time  Count  Wolff  - 
Metternich  happened  to  be  the  German  Ambassador,  a  man 
who,  in  spite  of  his  years,  and  in  contrast  to  Freiherr  von 
Wangenheim,  victim  of  a  weak  and  criminal  optimism  and 
pro-Turk  blindness,  now  and  then  dared  to  oppose  the 
Turkish  Government.  In  the  present  instance  he  reported 
the  matter  to  Germany;  whereupon  this  very  crime  which 
he  reported  was  made  the  pretext  for  his  dismissal. 

The  mixture  of  "consciencelessness,"  cowardice,  and 
blindness  displayed  by  our  Government  in  the  Armenian 
matter,  alone  would  suffice  to  undermine  the  loyalty  of  any 
thinking  human  being  who  believes  in  humanity  and  civiliza- 
tion. Not  every  German  will  light-heartedly,  like  those  diplo- 
mats of  Pera,  face  the  shame  of  having  history  note  that  the 
refinedly  cruel  extermination  of  a  civilized  and  worthy  peo- 
ple coincided  with  the  period  of  Germany's  hegemony  in 
Turkey. 


DUNAJEC:  THE  BREAKING  OF  THE 
RUSSIAN  FRONT 

THE  TRIUMPH  OF  GERMAN  ARTILLERY 

MAY    1ST 

GENERAL  VON  MACKENSEN  GENERAL  KROBATIN 

GRAND  DUKE  NICHOLAS  STANLEY  WASHBURN 

The  battle  of  the  Dunajec  River,  or  of  Gorlice  as  it  might  be  more 
accurately  called,  was  not  only  the  turning  point  of  1915;  it  was  the 
turning  point  of  the  entire  War  upon  the  eastern  front.  Up  to  that 
time  Russia  had  hoped  to  win  by  her  own  strength ;  had  dreamed  of 
sweeping  over  the  Carpathians,  holding  Austria  in  conquest,  and 
sweeping  on  to  Berlin.  After  the  terrible  crushing  of  her  defense 
line  which  began  along  the  Dunajec,  she  was  forever  on  the  defensive; 
many  of  her  councilors  were  urging  peace;  many  almost  openly  sup- 
ported Germany.  No  hope  of  victory  remained  to  Russia  except 
through  a  western  victory  by  Britain  and  France. 

The  Dunajec  was  also  a  revolution  in  modern  warfare.  So  prodigal 
an  employment  of  explosives  had  not  even  entered  the  imagination 
of  earlier  leaders.  The  preparation  of  such  quantities  of  ammuni- 
tion demanded  indeed  the  labors  of  an  entire  nation.  Germany  was 
willing  to  give  herself  thus  utterly  to  the  waging  of  war.  Unless  the 
Allies  could  come  promptly  and  effectively  to  the  same  position,  they 
would  be  hopelessly  outclassed.  So  important  does  it  thus  become  to 
the  reader  to  understand  not  only  the  battle  of  the  Dunajec  itself 
but  also  its  influence  upon  the  world  in  its  own  immediate  hour, 
that  we  give  here  the  official  reports  of  the  struggle,  German,  Aus- 
trian and  Russian,  and  then  a  general  survey  by  the  British  observer 
sent  with  the  Russian  troops. 

The  Dunajec  River  flows  through  northwestern  Galicia,  not  far 
from  the  ancient  Polish  capital  of  Cracow.  East  of  the  Dunajec 
lies  the  town  of  Gorlice,  and  as  the  breaking  Russians  fell  back 
through  Gorlice,  its  name  is  often  given  to  the  battle.  The  Russians 
were  driven  back  day  by  day  to  the  San  River  in  mid  Galicia.  On 
the  banks  of  the  San  lie  the  two  strongly  defensible  towns  of  Jaroslav 
and  Przemysl.  The  Russian  withdrawal  from  the  second  of  these 
took  place  on  June  3rd ;  and  as  this  committed  the  retreating  army 
definitely  to  the  abandonment  of  western  Galicia  it  may  be  regarded 
as  the  final  despairing  yielding  of  the  month-long  struggle.  The 
Carpathian  attack  against  Austria  had  to  be  abandoned  wholly.  In- 
deed, only  by  utmost  skill  did  Brusiloff,  the  Russian  general  in  the 
Carpathians,  save  his  army  from  being  surrounded  there  and  so 
cut  off. 

W.,  VOL.  III.— 12.  177 


178         BREAKING  THE  RUSSIAN  FRONT 

BY  GENERAL  VON   MACKENSEN 

TO  the  complete  surprise  of  the  enemy,  large  movements 
of  troops  into  West  Galicia  had  been  completed  by  the 
end  of  April.  These  troops,  subject  to  the  orders  of  Gen- 
eral von  Mackensen,  had  been  assigned  the  task  in  conjunc- 
tion with  the  neighboring  armies  of  our  Austrian  ally  of 
breaking  through  the  Russian  front  between  the  crest  of  the 
Carpathians  and  the  middle  Dunajec.  It  was  a  new  problem 
and  no  easy  undertaking.  The  heavens  granted  our  troops 
wonderful  sunshine  and  dry  roads.  Thus  flyers  and  artil- 
lery could  come  into  full  activity  and  the  difficulties  of  the 
terrain,  which  here  has  the  character  of  the  approaches  of 
the  German  Alps,  or  the  Horsal  hills  in  Thuringia,  could 
be  overcome.  At  several  points  ammunition  had  to  be  trans- 
ported amid  the  greatest  hardships  on  pack  animals  and 
the  marching  columns  and  batteries  had  to  be  moved  forward 
over  corduroy  roads.  All  the  accumulation  of  information 
and  preparations  necessary  for  breaking  through  the  enemy's 
line  had  been  quietly  and  secretly  accomplished.  On  the 
first  of  May  in  the  afternoon  the  artillery  began  its  fire  on 
the  Russian  positions.  These  in  some  five  months  had  been 
perfected  according  to  all  the  rules  of  the  art  of  fortifica- 
tion. In  stories  they  lay  one  over  the  other  along  the  steep 
heights,  whose  slopes  had  been  furnished  with  obstacles.  At 
some  points  of  special  importance  to  the  Russians  they  con- 
sisted of  as  many  as  seven  rows  of  trenches,  one  behind  the 
other.  The  works  were  very  skillfully  placed,  and  were 
adopted  to  flanking  one  another.  The  infantry  of  the  allied 
[Teutonic]  troops  in  the  nights  preceding  the  attack  had 
pushed  forward  closer  to  the  enemy  and  had  assumed  posi- 
tions in  readiness  for  the  forward  rush.  In  the  night  from 
May  ist  to  2nd  the  artillery  fired  in  slow  rhythm  at  the  en- 
emy's positions.  Pauses  in  the  fire  served  the  pioneers  for 
cutting  the  wire  entanglements.  On  the  2nd  of  May  at 
6  a.  m.  an  overwhelming  artillery  fire,  including  field  guns 
and  running  up  to  the  heaviest  calibers,  was  begun  on  the 
front  many  miles  in  extent  selected  for  the  effort  to  break 
through.     This  was  maintained  unbroken  for  four  hours. 


BREAKING  THE  RUSSIAN  FRONT  179 

At  10  o'clock  in  the  morning  these  hundreds  of  fire- 
spouting  tubes  suddenly  ceased  and  the  same  moment  the 
swarming  lines  and  attacking  columns  of  the  assailants  threw 
themselves  upon  the  hostile  positions.  The  enemy  had  been 
so  shaken  by  the  heavy  artillery  fire  that  his  resistance  at 
many  points  was  very  slight.  In  headlong  flight  he  left  his 
defenses,  when  the  infantry  of  the  [Teutonic]  allies  ap- 
peared before  his  trenches,  throwing  away  rifles  and  cook- 
ing utensils  and  leaving  immense  quantities  of  infantry  am- 
munition and  dead.  At  one  point  the  Russians  themselves 
cut  the  wire  entanglements  to  surrender  themselves  to  the 
Germans.  Frequently  the  enemy  made  no  further  resistance 
in  his  second  and  third  positions.  On  the  other  hand,  at 
certain  other  points  of  the  front  he  defended  himself  stub- 
bornly, making  an  embittered  fight  and  holding  the  neigh- 
borhood. With  the  Austrian  troops,  the  Bavarian  regiments 
attacked  Mount  Zameczyka,  lying  250  meters  above  their 
positions,  a  veritable  fortress.  A  Bavarian  infantry  regi- 
ment here  won  incomparable  laurels.  To  the  left  of  the  Ba- 
varians Silesian  regiments  stormed  the  heights  of  Sekowa 
and  Sakol.  Young  regiments  tore  from  the  enemy  the  des- 
perately defended  cemetery  height  of  Gorlice  and  the  per- 
sistently held  railway  embankment  at  Kennenitza.  Among 
the  Austrian  troops  Galician  battalions  had  stormed  the 
steep  heights  of  the  Pustki  Hill,  Hungarian  troops  having 
taken  in  fierce  fighting  the  Wiatrowka  heights.  Prussian 
guard  regiments  threw  the  enemy  out  of  his  elevated  posi- 
tions east  of  Biala  and  at  Staszkowka  stormed  seven  suc- 
cessive Russian  lines  which  were  stubbornly  held.  Either 
kindled  by  the  Russians  or  hit  by  a  shell,  a  naphtha  well 
behind  Gorlice  burst  into  flames.  Higher  than  the  houses 
the  flames  struck  up  into  the  sky  and  pillars  of  smoke  rose 
to  hundreds  of  yards. 

On  the  evening  of  the  2nd  of  May,  when  the  warm 
Spring  sun  had  begun  to  yield  to  the  coolness  of  night  the 
first  main  position  in  its  whole  depth  and  extent,  a  distance 
of  some  sixteen  kilometers,  had  been  broken  through  and  a 
gain  of  ground  of  some  four  kilometers  had  been  attained. 
At  least  20,000  prisoners,  dozens  of  cannon  and  fifty  ma- 


180         BREAKING  THE  RUSSIAN  FRONT 

chine  guns  remained  in  the  hands  of  the  allied  troops  that 
in  the  battle  had  competed  with  one  another  for  the  palm  of 
victory.  In  addition,  an  amount  of  booty  to  be  readily  esti- 
mated, in  the  shape  of  war  materials  of  all  sorts,  including 
great  masses  of  rifles  and  ammunition,  had  been  secured. 

From  the  German  Official  Press  Headquarters 

Reports  of  prisoners  are  unanimous  in  describing  the 
effect  of  the  artillery  fire  of  the  [Teutonic]  allies  as  more 
terrible  than  the  imagination  can  picture.  The  men,  who 
were  with  difficulty  recovering  from  the  sufferings  and  ex- 
ertions they  had  undergone,  agreed  that  they  could  not  im- 
agine conditions  worse  in  hell  than  they  had  been  for  four 
hours  in  the  trenches.  Corps,  divisions,  brigades,  and  regi- 
ments melted  away  as  though  in  the  heat  of  a  furnace.  In 
no  direction  was  escape  possible,  for  there  was  no  spot  of 
ground  on  which  the  four  hundred  guns  of  the  Teutonic 
allies  had  not  exerted  themselves.  All  the  Generals  and 
Staff  Officers  of  one  Russian  division  were  killed  or 
wounded.  Moreover,  insanity  raged  in  the  ranks  of  the 
Russians,  and  from  all  sides  hysterical  cries  could  be  heard 
rising  above  the  roar  of  our  guns,  too  strong  for  human 
nerves.  Over  the  remnants  of  the  Russians  who  crowded 
in  terror  into  the  remotest  corners  of  their  trenches  there 
broke  the  mighty  rush  of  our  masses  of  infantry,  before 
which  also  the  Russian  reserves,  hurrying  forward,  crum- 
bled away. 

In  barely  fourteen  days  the  army  of  Mackensen  car- 
ried its  offensive  forward  from  Gorlice  to  Jaroslav.  With 
daily  fighting,  for  the  most  part  against  fortified  positions, 
it  crossed  the  line  of  three  rivers  and  gained  in  territory 
more  than  ioo  kilometers  in  an  airline.  On  the  evening  of 
the  fourteenth  day,  with  the  taking  of  the  city  and  bridge- 
head, Jaroslav,  they  won  access  to  the  lower  San.  It  was 
now  necessary  to  cross  this  stream  on  a  broad  front.  The 
enemy,  though,  still  held  before  Radymo  and  in  the  angle  of 
San-Wislok  with  two  strongly  fortified  bridge-heads  the 
west  bank  of  this  river.  For  the  rest  he  confined  himself 
to  the  frontal  defense  of  the  east  bank. 


BREAKING  THE  RUSSIAN  FRONT  181 

While  troops  of  the  guard  in  close  touch  with  Austrian 
regiments  gained,  righting,  the  crossing  of  the  river  at  Jaro- 
slav,  and  continued  to  throw  the  enemy,  who  was  daily  re- 
ceiving reinforcements,  continually  further  toward  the  east 
and  northeast,  Hanoverian  regiments  forced  the  passage  of 
the  river  several  kilometers  further  down  stream.  Bruns- 
wickers,  by  the  storming  of  the  heights  of  Wiazowinca, 
opened  the  way  and  thereby  won  the  obstinately  defended 
San  crossing.  Further  to  the  north  the  San  angle  was 
cleared  of  the  enemy  that  had  still  held  on  there.  One 
Colonel,  fifteen  officers,  7,800  prisoners,  four  cannon, 
twenty-eight  machine  guns,  thirteen  ammunition  wagons, 
and  a  field  kitchen  fell  into  our  hands.  The  rest  found  them- 
selves obliged  to  make  a  hasty  retreat  to  the  east  bank.  „ 

These  battles  and  successes  took  place  on  the  17th  of 
May  in  the  presence  of  the  German  Emperor,  who,  on  the 
same  day,  conferred  upon  the  Chief  of  Staff  of  the  army 
here  engaged,  Colonel  von  Seeckt,  the  order  pour  le  merite, 
the  commander  of  the  army,  General  von  Mackensen,  hav- 
ing already  received  special  honors.  The  Emperor  had 
hurried  forward  to  his  troops  by  automobile.  On  the  way 
he  was  greeted  with  loud  hurrahs  by  the  wounded  riding 
back  in  wagons.  On  the  heights  of  Jaroslav  the  Emperor 
met  Prince  Eitel  Friedrich,  and  then,  from  several  points  of 
observation,  for  hours  followed  with  keen  attention  the 
progress  of  the  battle  for  the  crossing. 

In  the  days  from  the  18th  to  the  20th  of  May  the  Teu- 
tonic allies  pressed  on  further  toward  the  east,  northeast, 
and  north,  threw  the  enemy  out  of  Sieniawa  and  took  up 
positions  on  the  east  bank  of  the  river  upon  a  front  of  twenty 
or  thirty  kilometers.  The  enemy  withdrew  behind  the  Ler- 
baczowa  stream.  All  his  attempts  to  win  back  the  lost 
ground  were  unsuccessful. 

In  the  month  of  May  863  officers  and  268,869  men  were 
taken  prisoners  in  the  southeastern  theater  of  war,  while 
251  cannon  and  576  machine  guns  were  captured.  Of  these 
numbers,  the  capturing  of  400  officers,  including  two  Gen- 
erals,   153,254   men,    160  cannon,   including   twenty-eight 


182         BREAKING  THE  RUSSIAN  FRONT 

heavy  ones,  and  403  machine  guns,  is  to  the  credit  of  the 
troops  under  General  Mackensen. 

Including  prisoners  taken  in  the  eastern  theater  of  war, 
the  total  number  of  Russians  who  have  fallen  into  the  hands 
of  the  Germanic  allied  troops  during  the  month  of  May 
amounts  to  about  1,000  officers  and  more  than  300,000 
men. 

BY  GENERAL   KROBATIN 

Vienna,  May  13th. 

From  January  to  the  middle  of  April  the  Russians  vainly 
exerted  themselves  to  break  through  to  Hungary,  but  they 
completely  failed  with  heavy  losses.  Thereupon  the  time 
had  come  to  crush  the  enemy  in  a  common  attack  with  a 
full  force  of  the  combined  troops  of  both  empires. 

A  victory  at  Tarnow  and  Gorlice  freed  West  Galicia 
from  the  enemy  and  caused  the  Russian  fronts  on  the  Nida 
and  in  the  Carpathians  to  give  way.  In  a  ten  days'  battle 
the  victorious  troops  beat  the  Russian  Third  and  Eighth 
Armies  to  annihilation,  and  quickly  covered  the  ground  from 
the  Dunajec  and  Beskids  to  the  San  River — 130  kilometers 
(nearly  81  miles)  of  territory. 

From  May  2nd  to  12th  the  prisoners  taken  numbered 
143,500,  while  100  guns  and  350  machine  guns  were  cap- 
tured, besides  the  booty  already  mentioned.  We  suppressed 
small  detachments  of  the  enemy  scattered  in  the  woods  in 
the  Carpathians. 

Near  Odvzechowa  the  entire  staff  of  the  Russian  Forty- 
eighth  Division  of  Infantry,  including  General  Korniloff, 
surrendered.  The  best  indication  of  the  confusion  of  the 
Russian  Army  is  the  fact  that  our  Ninth  Corps  captured 
in  the  last  few  days  Russians  of  fifty-one  various  regiments. 
The  quantity  of  captured  Russian  war  material  is  piled  up 
and  has  not  yet  been  enumerated. 

North  of  the  Vistula  the  Austro-Hungarian  troops  are 
advancing  across  Stopnica.  The  German  troops  have  cap- 
tured Kielce. 

East  of  Uzsok  Pass  the  German  and  Hungarian  troops 
took  several  Russian  positions  on  the  heights  and  advanced 


BREAKING  THE  RUSSIAN  FRONT         183 

to  the  south  of  Turka,  capturing  4,000  prisoners.     An  at- 
tack is  proceeding  here  and  in  the  direction  of  Skole. 

In  southeast  Galicia  strong  hostile  troops  are  attacking 
across  Horodenka. 

BY  GRAND  DUKE  NICHOLAS 

Petrograd,  June  3rd. 

As  Przemysl,  in  view  of  the  state  of  its  artillery  and  its 
works,  which  were  destroyed  by  the  Austrians  before  their 
capitulation,  was  recognized  as  incapable  of  defending  it- 
self, its  maintenance  in  our  hands  only  served  our  purpose 
until  such  time  as  our  possession  of  positions  surrounding 
the  town  on  the  northwest  facilitated  our  operations  on  the 
San. 

The  enemy  having  captured  Jaroslav  and  Radymno  and 
begun  to  spread  along  the  right  bank  of  the  river,  the  main- 
tenance of  these  positions  forced  our  troops  to  fight  on  an 
unequal  and  very  difficult  front,  increasing  it  by  thirty-five 
versts  (about  twenty-four  miles),  and  subjecting  the  troops 
occupying  these  positions  to  the  concentrated  fire  of  the 
enemy's  numerous  guns. 

Przemysl  was  bombarded  with  heavy  guns  up  to  16-inch 
caliber,  and  the  enemy  delivered  his  principal  attack  against 
the  north  front  in  the  region  of  Forts  10  and  II,  which  the 
Austrians  had  almost  completely  demolished  before  the  sur- 
render of  the  fortress. 

When  we  repulsed  these  attacks  the  enemy  succeeded 
in  taking  several  of  our  guns,  which  had  bombarded  the 
enemy's  columns  until  the  latter  were  close  to  the  muzzles, 
and  the  last  shell  was  spent. 

BY  STANLEY  WASHBURN 

The  world's  history  records  nothing  that  has  even  ap- 
proximated to  this  German  drive  which  fell  on  one  Russian 
Army,  the  bulk  of  which  remained  at  its  post  and  perished. 
The  total  number  of  German  army  corps  sent  down  to 
do  this  job  is  uncertain.  I  have  heard  from  many  in  high 
authority  estimates  differing  so  widely  that  I  can  supply  no 
statement  as  absolutely  correct.     Perhaps  sixteen  is  not  far 


1 84         BREAKING  THE  RUSSIAN  FRONT 

from  the  actual  number,  though  probably  reinforcements 
and  extra  divisions  sent  in  pretty  steadily  to  fill  losses, 
brought  up  the  total  to  a  larger  number  than  the  full  strength 
of  sixteen  corps.  However,  the  details  at  this  time  are  im- 
material. The  main  point  is  that  the  Russians  were  en- 
tirely outnumbered  in  men,  guns  and  ammunition.  The 
statements  about  the  German  massed  guns  also  vary  as 
widely  as  from  2,000  to  4,000.  Certainly  they  had  not  less 
than  200  guns  equal  to  or  exceeding  8-inch  types.  These 
were  concentrated  on  the  front  which  was  held  by  three  or 
four  corps  of  the  devoted  Dunajec  army. 

Men  who  know  have  told  me  that  what  followed  was 
indescribable.  I  have  not  heard  that  there  was  any  panic, 
or  attempt  to  retreat  on  the  part  of  the  troops.  In  char- 
acteristic Russian  fashion  they  remained  and  took  their 
grueling.  For  whole  versts  behind  the  line,  I  am  told  that 
the  terrain  was  a  hash  of  earth,  mangled  bodies,  and  frag- 
ments of  exploded  shell.  If  the  statement  that  the  Germans 
fired  700,000  shells  in  three  hours  is  true,  and  it  is  ac- 
cepted in  the  Russian  Army,  one  can  readily  realize  what 
must  have  been  the  condition  of  the  army  occupying  that 
line  of  works.  Much  criticism  has  been  brought  against  the 
General  commanding  because  he  had  no  well-prepared  sec- 
ond line  of  trenches.  No  doubt  he  ought  to  have  had  it,  but 
it  would  have  made  little  difference  beyond  delaying  the 
advance  a  few  days.  The  German  machine  had  been  pre- 
paring for  two  months,  and  everything  was  running  as 
smooth  as  a  well-oiled  engine,  with  troops,  munitions  and 
supplies  being  fed  in  with  precision  and  regularity. 

Russia  is  not  an  industrial  nation,  and  cannot  turn  her 
resources  into  war  material  overnight  as  the  Germans  have 
been  able  to  do.  She  was  outclassed  in  everything  except 
bravery,  and  neither  the  Germans  nor  any  other  army  can 
claim  superiority  to  her  in  that  respect.  With  the  center 
literally  cut  away,  the  keystone  of  the  Russian  line  had  been 
pulled  out,  and  nothing  remained  but  to  retire.  In  this  re- 
tirement five  Russian  armies  were  involved. 

The  unfortunate  army  of  the  Dunajec,  whose  commander 
and  number  are  as  well  known  in  England  as  here,  began 


BREAKING  THE  RUSSIAN  FRONT         185 

then  to  fall  back  with  what  there  was  left  of  it  on  the  San, 
tearing  up  railroads  and  fighting  a  rearguard  action  with 
what  strength  it  could  command.  In  the  meantime  the  army 
of  Brusiloff,  which  up  to  this  time  had  never  been  defeated, 
was  well  through  the  Carpathians  and  going  strong.  The 
crumbling  of  their  right  neighbor  left  them  in  a  terrible 
plight,  and  only  skillful  and  rapid  maneuvering  got  them 
back  out  of  the  passes  in  time  to  get  in  touch  with  the  frag- 
ments of  the  retreating  center,  which  by  the  time  it  reached 
the  San  had  got  reinforcements  and  some  ammunition. 
BrusilofFs  right  tried  to  hold  Przemysl,  but  as  the  com- 
mander assured  me,  there  was  nothing  left  of  the  fortifica- 
tions. Besides,  as  I  gather  from  officers  in  that  part  of  his 
army,  further  retirements  of  the  next  army  kept  exposing 
their  flank,  and  made  it  imperative  for  the  whole  army  to 
commence  its  retreat  toward  the  Russian  frontier. 

I  have  good  reason  for  believing  that  the  Russian  plan 
to  retire  to  their  own  frontier  was  decided  on  when  they 
lost  Przemysl,  and  that  the  battles  on  the  Grodek  line,  around 
Lwow,  were  merely  rearguard  actions.  In  any  case,  I  do 
know  that  while  the  fighting  was  still  in  progress  on  the 
San,  and  just  as  Przemysl  was  taken,  work  was  commenced 
on  a  permanent  line  of  defense  south  of  Lublin  and  Cholm, 
the  line  in  fact  which  is  at  this  moment  being  held  by  the 
Russians.  My  belief,  then,  is  that  everything  that  took  place 
between  the  San  and  the  present  line  must  be  considered 
inevitable  in  the  higher  interests  of  Russian  strategy.  The 
interim  between  leaving  the  San  and  taking  up  what  is  now 
approximately  the  line  on  which  they  will  probably  make  a 
definite  stand,  will  make  a  very  fine  page  in  Russian  history. 
I  cannot  at  this  time  go  into  any  details,  but  the  Allies  will 
open  their  eyes  when  they  know  exactly  how  little  the  Rus- 
sians had  in  the  way  of  ammunition  to  hold  off  this  mass  of 
Germans  and  Austrians  whose  supply  of  shell  poured  in 
steadily  week  after  week. 

Next  to  the  army  of  Brusiloff  is  that  army  which  had 
been  assaulting  and  making  excellent  headway  in  the  East- 
ern Carpathians.  They,  too,  were  attacked  with  terrible 
energy,  but  taken  independently  could  probably  have  held 


1 86        BREAKING  THE  RUSSIAN  FRONT 

on  indefinitely.  As  it  was  they  never  moved  until  the  re- 
tirement of  all  the  other  armies  west  of  them  rendered 
their  position  untenable.  The  German  and  Austrian  com- 
muniques have  constantly  discussed  the  defeat  of  this  army. 
The  world  can  judge  whether  it  was  demoralized  when  it 
learns  that  in  six  weeks,  from  Stryj  to  the  Zota  Lipa,  it  cap- 
tured 53,000  prisoners.  During  this  same  period,  the  army 
of  Bukovina  in  the  far  left  was  actually  advancing,  and  only 
came  back  to  preserve  the  symmetry  of  the  whole  line.  The 
problem  of  falling  back  over  this  extremely  long  front  with 
five  great  armies,  after  the  center  was  completely  broken, 
was  as  difficult  an  one  as  could  well  be  presented.  In  the  face 
of  an  alert  enemy  there  were  here  and  there  local  disasters 
and  bags  of  Russian  prisoners,  but  with  all  their  skill,  and 
with  all  their  railroads,  and  superiority  in  both  men  and 
ammunition,  the  Germans  and  the  Austrians  have  not  been 
able  to  destroy  the  Russian  force,  which  stands  before  them 
to-day  on  a  new  and  stronger  line.  The  further  the  Rus- 
sians have  retired,  the  slower  has  been  their  retreat  and  the 
more  difficult  has  it  been  for  the  enemy  to  follow  up  their 
strokes  with  anything  like  the  same  strength  and  energy.  In 
other  words,  the  Russians  are  pretty  nearly  beyond  the 
reach  of  enemy  blows  which  can  hurt  them  fatally. 

The  Austrians  have  followed  up  the  Eastern  armies  and 
claim  enormous  victories,  but  it  must  be  pretty  clear  now, 
even  to  the  Austrians  and  Germans,  that  these  victories, 
which  are  costing  them  twice  what  they  are  costing  the 
Russians,  are  merely  rearguard  actions.  In  any  case,  the 
Austrian  enthusiasm  is  rapidly  ebbing  away.  After  two 
months  of  fighting  the  Germans  have  finally  swung  their 
main  strength  back  toward  the  line  of  Cholm-Lublin,  with 
the  probable  intent  of  finishing  up  the  movement  by  threat- 
ening Warsaw  and  thus  closing  up  successfully  the  whole 
Galician  campaign,  which,  as  many  believe,  had  this  end  in 
view.  But  now  they  find  a  recuperated  and  much  stronger 
Russian  Army  complacently  awaiting  them  on  a  selected  po- 
sition which  is  in  every  way  the  best  they  have  ever  had. 


THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSITANIA 

GERMANY  AND   THE  UNITED   STATES   AT   OPEN   CLASH 

MAY    7TH 

LORD  MERSEY  PRESIDENT  WILSON 

GOTTLIEB  VON  JAGOW 

On  May  7,  1915,  the  dispute  between  Germany  and  the  United 
States,  caused  by  the  U-Boat  warfare  upon  merchant  ships,  passed 
from  the  diplomatic  to  the  acute  and  embittered  stage.  The  British 
passenger  steamer  Lusitania  was  torpedoed,  and  sank  with  a  loss  of 
nearly  twelve  hundred  lives,  one-third  of  those  who  perished  being 
women  and  children.  Less  than  eight  hundred  of  those  aboard  were 
saved.  Of  the  slain,  124  were  United  States  citizen  passengers.  Only 
35  Americans  survived,  the  percentage  of  mortality  being  higher 
among  them  than  in  any  other  class  aboard.  Apparently  they  gave 
their  chance  at  the  life-boats  to  others. 

The  sinking  of  the  Lusitania  was  a  deliberate  step  taken  by  the 
German  Government  in  its  course  of  terrorizing  the  seas.  Neutrals 
had  been  already  threatened,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the  decree  of  Feb- 
ruary 4th.  Yet  neutrals  continued  to  sail  the  oceans.  This  seemed 
unendurable  to  German  dignity.  Perhaps  the  threat  had  been  too 
indefinite ;  Germany  had  only  implied  that  neutrals  might  be  slain, 
and  each  time  this  fate  had  actually  happened  to  citizens  of  the  power- 
ful United  States  (not  when  it  happened  to  feebler  neutrals),  she 
had  apologized  and  expressed  her  regret.  So  now  she  reversed  her 
method.  She  warned  Americans  by  newspaper  that  if  they  sailed  on 
British  ships,  specifying  in  particular  the  Lusitania,  they  would  be 
slain — and  then  they  were,   124  of  them. 

It  is  one  of  the  strangest  of  human  illogicalities  that  in  the  minds 
of  all  Germans,  and  some  other  people,  this  precedent  threat  seems 
somehow  to  lighten  Germany's  guilt  or  even  to  remove  guilt  alto- 
gether. A  man  announces,  "If  anybody  in  our  town  comes  on  the 
main  street  to-morrow  I'll  shoot  them."  They  all  come,  with  or  with- 
out knowledge  of  his  threat,  and  he  shoots  all  he  can.  Then  his 
family  congratulate  him  on  his  marksmanship,  and  say,  "It's  their 
fault  for  coming  on  the  public  street;  he  warned  them  not  to." 

Of  course  the  real  question  at  issue  was  that  of  the  February  4th 
decree,  in  which  Germany  had  asserted  the  right  to  change  Interna- 
tional Law  to  the  extent  of  sinking  British  ships  without  examination 
as  to  their  character  or  effort  to  save  the  civilians  aboard.  Against 
this,  the  United  States  had  declared  all  along,  that  it  would  not 
submit  to  any  such  change  if  it  involved  killing  an  American  citizen. 
Germany,  not  yet  prepared  to  go  to  the  length  which  she  did  two 
years  later,  of  destroying  American  ships,  was  nevertheless  determined 

187 


1 88        THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSITANIA 

not  to  spare  British  ships  because  of  the  presence  of  Americans  on 
board.    She  used  the  Lusitania  case  to  make  this  definite. 

Perhaps  she  was  surprised  by  the  vehemence  of  American  resent- 
ment. The  slaying  of  124  people,  even  if  some  of  them  were  rather 
prominent,  meant  nothing  to  the  German  war  lords.  At  first  they 
sought  to  brazen  the  matter  out ;  they  revived  the  munition  trade 
question ;  they  asserted  that  the  Lusitania  was  really  an  armed  war- 
ship ;  their  propagandists  secured  affidavits  in  America — affidavits  after- 
ward admitted  to  be  perjuries — declaring  that  guns  and  ammunition 
had  been  secretly  stored  upon  the  Lusitania. 

The  United  States  brushed  all  these  pleas  aside.  The  pacifist 
Secretary  of  State,  Mr.  Bryan,  resigned ;  and  President  Wilson  in  his 
own  hand  wrote  to  Germany  the  first  of  those  clear  and  decisive 
notes  which  became  so  prominent  a  feature  of  the  War.  That  note 
is  given  here,  following  upon  the  earlier  official  defense  by  Von 
Jagow,  Germany's  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs.  We  present  also  the 
British  law-court  report  of  the  disaster,  as  it  was  announced  by  the 
presiding  judge,  Lord  Mersey,  after  a  long  and  careful  investigation 
into  every  tale. 

The  United  States  courts  also  made  their  own  investigation  of  the 
case,  and  the  United  States  Government  declared  positively  that  the 
Lusitania  was  not  armed  and  carried  no  store  of  explosives.  Yet 
such  is  the  old  German  official  temperament  that  Admiral  von  Tirpitz, 
head  of  the  German  submarine  service,  in  1919  brushed  all  these  offi- 
cial statements  aside  and  repeated  the  first  German  assertion  as  if  it 
were  a  proven  fact  instead  of  a  proven  perjury.  Note  again,  what 
our  volumes  have  already  had  to  emphasize,  the  German  official  faith 
in  the  power  of  persistent  falsehood.  Says  Von  Tirpitz:  "With 
criminal  recklessness  and  despite  warnings  from  our  accredited  am- 
bassador, Americans  embarked  on  this  armed  cruiser  already  heavily 
laden  with  ammunition."  Then  he  adds :  "After  the  torpedo  struck 
there  was  a  second  explosion  inside  caused  by  the  mass  of  ammuni- 
tion on  board.  This  was  the  sole  cause  of  the  immediate  sinking  of 
the  Lusitania  and  the  great  loss  of  human  life." 

c.  F.   H. 

BY  LORD  MERSEY 

The  Voyage 
The  Departure  from  New  York 

THE  Lusitania  left  New  York  at  noon  on  the  1st  of  May, 
191 5.  I  am  told  that  before  she  sailed  notices  were 
published  in  New  York  by  the  German  authorities  that  the 
ship  would  be  attacked  by  German  submarines,  and  people 
were  warned  not  to  take  passage  in  her.  I  mention  this  mat- 
ter not  as  affecting  the  present  inquiry  but  because  I  believe  it 
is  relied  upon  as  excusing  in  some  way  the  subsequent  killing 
of  the  passengers  and  crew  on  board  the  ship.    In  my  view, 


THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSITANIA       189 

so  far  from  affording  any  excuse  the  threats  serve  only  to 
aggravate  the  crime  by  making  it  plain  that  the  intention  to 
commit  it  was  deliberately  formed  and  the  crime  itself 
planned  before  the  ship  sailed.  Unfortunately  the  threats 
were  not  regarded  as  serious  by  the  people  intended  to  be 
affected  by  them.  They  apparently  thought  it  impossible 
that  such  an  atrocity  as  the  destruction  of  their  lives  could 
be  in  the  contemplation  of  the  German  Government.  But 
they  were  mistaken :  and  the  ship  sailed. 

The  Ship's  Speed 

It  appears  that  a  question  had  arisen  in  the  office  of  the 
Cunard  Company  shortly  after  the  war  broke  out  as  to 
whether  the  transatlantic  traffic  would  be  sufficient  to  justify 
the  Company  in  running  their  two  big  and  expensive  ships 
— the  Lusitania  and  the  Mauretania.  The  conclusion  arrived 
at  was  that  one  of  the  two  (the  Lusitania)  could  be  run 
once  a  month  if  the  boiler  power  were  reduced  by  one-fourth. 
The  saving  in  coal  and  labor  resulting  from  this  reduction 
would,  it  was  thought,  enable  the  Company  to  avoid  loss 
though  not  to  make  a  profit.  Accordingly  six  of  the  Lusi- 
tania s  boilers  were  closed  and  the  ship  began  to  run  in  these 
conditions  in  November,  1914.  She  had  made  five  round 
voyages  in  this  way  before  the  voyage  in  question  in  this 
inquiry.  The  effect  of  the  closing  of  the  six  boilers  was  to 
reduce  the  attainable  speed  from  24.3/2  to  21  knots.  But  this 
reduction  still  left  the  Lusitania  a  considerably  faster  ship 
than  any  other  steamer  plying  across  the  Atlantic.  In  my 
opinion  this  reduction  of  the  steamer's  speed  was  of  no  sig- 
nificance and  was  proper  in  the  circumstances. 

The  Torpedoing  of  the  Ship 

By  May  7th  the  Lusitania  had  entered  what  is  called  the 
"Danger  Zone,"  that  is  to  say,  she  had  reached  the  waters  in 
which  enemy  submarines  might  be  expected.  The  Captain 
had  therefore  taken  precautions.  He  had  ordered  all  the 
life-boats  under  davits  to  be  swung  out.  He  had  ordered  all 
bulkhead  doors  to  be  closed  except  such  as  were  required 
to  be  kept  open  in  order  to  work  the  ship.    These  orders  had 


190       THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSITANIA 

been  carried  out.  The  portholes  were  also  closed.  The  look' 
out  on  the  ship  was  doubled — two  men  being  sent  to  the 
crow's  nest  and  two  men  to  the  eyes  of  the  ship.  Two  offi' 
cers  were  on  the  bridge  and  a  quartermaster  was  on  either 
side  with  instructions  to  look  out  for  submarines.  Orders 
were  also  sent  to  the  engine-room  between  noon  and  2  p.  m. 
of  the  7th  to  keep  the  steam  pressure  very  high  in  case  of 
emergency  and  to  give  the  vessel  all  possible  speed  if  the  tele- 
phone from  the  bridge  should  ring. 

Up  to  8  a.  m.  on  the  morning  of  the  7th  the  speed  on  the 
voyage  had  been  maintained  at  21  knots.  At  8  a.  m.  the 
speed  was  reduced  to  18  knots.  The  object  of  this  reduction 
was  to  secure  the  ship's  arrival  outside  the  bar  at  Liverpool 
at  about  4  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  the  8th,  when  the  tide 
would  serve  to  enable  her  to  cross  the  bar  into  the  Mersey 
at  early  dawn.  Shortly  after  this  alteration  of  the  speed  a 
fog  came  on  and  the  speed  was  further  reduced  for  a  time  to 
15  knots.  A  little  before  noon  the  fog  lifted  and  the  speed 
was  restored  to  18  knots,  from  which  it  was  never  subse- 
quently changed.  At  this  time  land  was  sighted  about  two 
points  abaft  the  beam,  which  the  Captain  took  to  be  Brow 
Head;  he  could  not,  however,  identify  it  with  sufficient  cer- 
tainty to  enable  him  to  fix  the  position  of  his  ship  upon  the 
chart.  He  therefore  kept  his  ship  on  her  course,  which  was 
S.  87  E.  and  about  parallel  with  the  land  until  12.40,  when, 
in  order  to  make  a  better  landfall  he  altered  his  course  to 
N.  67  E.  This  brought  him  closer  to  the  land,  and  he  sighted 
the  Old  Head  of  Kinsale.  He  then  (at  1.40  p.  m.)  altered 
his  course  back  to  S.  870  E.,  and  having  steadied  his  ship  on 
that  course,  began  (at  1.50)  to  take  a  four-point  bearing. 
This  operation,  which  I  am  advised  would  occupy  30  or  40 
minutes,  was  in  process  at  the  time  when  the  ship  was  tor- 
pedoed, as  hereafter  described. 

At  2  p.m. the  passengers  were  finishing  their  midday  meal. 

At  2.15  p.  m.,  when  ten  to  fifteen  miles  off  the  Old  Head 
of  Kinsale,  the  weather  being  then  clear  and  the  sea  smooth, 
the  Captain,  who  was  on  the  port  side  of  the  lower  bridge, 
heard  the  call,  "There  is  a  torpedo  coming,  sir,"  given  by 
the  second  officer.     He  looked  to  starboard  and  then  saw  a 


THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSITANIA       191 

streak  of  foam  in  the  wake  of  a  torpedo  traveling  towards  his 
ship.  Immediately  afterwards  the  Lusitania  was  struck  on 
the  starboard  side  somewhere  between  the  third  and  fourth 
funnels.  The  blow  broke  number  5  life-boat  to  splinters. 
A  second  torpedo  was  fired  immediately  afterwards,  which 
also  struck  the  ship  on  the  starboard  side.  The  two  torpedoes 
struck  the  ship  almost  simultaneously. 

Both  these  torpedoes  were  discharged  by  a  German  sub- 
marine from  a  distance  variously  estimated  at  from  two  to 
five  hundred  yards.  No  warning  of  any  kind  was  given.  It 
is  also  in  evidence  that  shortly  afterwards  a  torpedo  from 
another  submarine  was  fired  on  the  port  side  of  the  Lusitania. 
This  torpedo  did  not  strike  the  ship  :  and  the  circumstance  is 
only  mentioned  for  the  purpose  of  showing  that  perhaps 
more  than  one  submarine  was  taking  part  in  the  attack. 

The  Lusitania  on  being  struck  took  a  heavy  list  to  star- 
board and  in  less  than  twenty  minutes  she  sank  in  deep  water. 
Eleven  hundred  and  ninety-eight  men,  women,  and  children 
were  drowned.1 

Sir  Edward  Carson,  when  opening  the  case,  described 
the  course  adopted  by  the  German  Government  in  directing 
this  attack  as  "contrary  to  International  Law  and  the  usages 
of  war,"  and  as  constituting,  according  to  the  law  of  all  civil- 
ized countries,  "a  deliberate  attempt  to  murder  the  passen- 
gers on  board  the  ship."  This  statement  is,  in  my  opinion, 
true,  and  it  is  made  in  language  not  a  whit  too  strong  for  the 
occasion.  The  defenseless  creatures  on  board,  made  up  of 
harmless  men  and  women,  and  of  helpless  children,  were 
done  to  death  by  the  crew  of  the  German  submarine  acting 
under  the  directions  of  the  officials  of  the  German  Govern- 
ment. In  the  questions  submitted  to  me  by  the  Board  of 
Trade  I  am  asked,  "What  was  the  cause  of  the  loss  of  life?" 
The  answer  is  plain.  The  effective  cause  of  the  loss  of  life 
was  the  attack  made  against  the  ship  by  those  on  board  the 
submarine.  It  was  a  murderous  attack  because  made  with  a 
deliberate  and  wholly  unjustifiable  intention  of  killing  the 

1  The  commander  of  the  U-boat  was  Captain  Schwieger.  He  after- 
ward perished  in  the  destruction  of  his  submarine  in  September,  1917, 
so  joining  his  victims  in  the  ocean's   deeps. 


192        THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSITANIA 

people  on  board.  German  authorities  on  the  laws  of  war  at 
sea  themselves  establish  beyond  all  doubt  that  though  in  some 
cases  the  destruction  of  an  enemy  trader  may  be  permissible, 
there  is  always  an  obligation  first  to  secure  the  safety  of  the 
lives  of  those  on  board.  The  guilt  of  the  persons  concerned 
in  the  present  case  is  confirmed  by  the  vain  excuses  which 
have  been  put  forward  on  their  behalf  by  the  German  Gov- 
ernment as  before  mentioned. 

One  witness,  who  described  himself  as  a  French  subject 
from  the  vicinity  of  Switzerland,  and  who  was  in  the  sec- 
ond-class dining-room  in  the  after  part  of  the  ship  at  the 
time  of  the  explosion,  stated  that  the  nature  of  the  explo- 
sion was  "similar  to  the  rattling  of  a  maxim  gun  for  a  short 
period,"  and  suggested  that  this  noise  disclosed  the  "secret" 
existence  of  some  ammunition.  The  sound,  he  said,  came 
from  underneath  the  whole  floor.  I  did  not  believe  this  gen- 
tleman. His  demeanor  was  very  unsatisfactory.  There  was 
no  confirmation  of  his  story,  and  it  appeared  that  he  had 
threatened  the  Cunard  Company  that  if  they  did  not  make 
him  some  immediate  allowance  on  account  of  a  claim  which 
he  was  putting  forward  for  compensation,  he  would  have  the 
unpleasant  duty  of  making  his  claim  in  public,  and,  in  so 
doing,  of  producing  "evidence  which  will  not  be  to  the  credit 
either  of  your  Company  or  of  the  Admiralty."  The  Com- 
pany had  not  complied  with  his  request. 

It  may  be  worth  while  noting  that  Leith,  the  Marconi 
operator,  was  also  in  the  second-class  dining-saloon  at  the 
time  of  the  explosion.  He  speaks  of  but  one  explosion.  In 
my  opinion  there  was  no  explosion  of  any  part  of  the  cargo. 

Orders  Given  and  Work  Done  After  the  Torpedoing 

The  Captain  was  on  the  bridge  at  the  time  his  ship  was 
struck,  and  he  remained  there  giving  orders  until  the  ship 
foundered.  His  first  order  was  to  lower  all  boats  io  the  rail. 
This  order  was  obeyed  as  far  as  it  possibly  could  be.  He 
then  called  out,  "Women  and  children  first."  The  order  was 
then  given  to  hard-a-starboard  the  helm  with  a  view  to  head- 
ing towards  the  land,  and  orders  were  telegraphed  to  the 
engine-room.    The  orders  given  to  the  engine-room  are  diffi- 


THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSITANIA       193 

cult  to  follow  and  there  is  obvious  confusion  about  them.  It 
is  not,  however,  important  to  consider  them,  for  the  engines 
were  put  out  of  commission  almost  at  once  by  the  inrush  of 
water  and  ceased  working,  and  the  lights  in  the  engine- 
room  were  blown  out. 

Leith,  the  Marconi  operator,  immediately  sent  out  an 
S.O.S.  signal,  and,  later  on,  another  message,  "Come  at 
once,  big  list,  10  miles  south  Head  Old  Kinsale."  These 
messages  were  repeated  continuously  and  were  acknowl- 
edged. At  first,  the  messages  were  sent  out  by  the  power 
supplied  from  the  ship's  dynamo;  but  in  three  or  four  min- 
utes this  power  gave  out  and  the  messages  were  sent  out  by 
means  of  the  emergency  apparatus  in  the  wireless  cabin. 

All  the  collapsible  boats  were  loosened  from  their  lash- 
ings and  freed  so  that  they  could  float  when  the  ship  sank. 

The  Launching  of  the  Life-boats 

Complaints  were  made  by  some  of  the  witnesses  about 
the  manner  in  which  the  boats  were  launched  and  about 
their  leaky  condition  when  in  the  water.  I  do  not  question 
the  good  faith  of  these  witnesses,  but  I  think  their  complaints 
were  ill-founded. 

Three  difficulties  presented  themselves  in  connection  with 
the  launching  of  the  boats.  First,  the  time  was  very  short: 
only  twenty  minutes  elapsed  between  the  first  alarm  and  the 
sinking  of  the  ship.  Secondly,  the  ship  was  under  way  the 
whole  time :  the  engines  were  put  out  of  commission  almost 
at  once,  so  that  the  way  could  not  be  taken  off.  Thirdly, 
the  ship  instantly  took  a  great  list  to  starboard,  which  made 
it  impossible  to  launch  the  port  side  boats  properly  and 
rendered  it  very  difficult  for  the  passengers  to  get  into  the 
starboard  boats.  The  port  side  boats  were  thrown  inboard 
and  the  starboard  boats  inconveniently  far  outboard. 

In  addition  to  these  difficulties  there  were  the  well-meant 
but  probably  disastrous  attempts  of  the  frightened  passen- 
gers to  assist  in  the  launching  operations.  Attempts  were 
made  by  the  passengers  to  push  some  of  the  boats  on  the  port 
side  off  the  ship  and  to  get  them  to  the  water.  Some  of  these 
boats  caught  on  the  rail  and  capsized.    One  or  two  did,  how- 

w.,  VOL.  III.— 13. 


194        THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSITANIA 

ever,  reach  the  water,  but  I  am  satisfied  that  they  were  seri- 
ously damaged  in  the  operation.  They  were  lowered  a  dis- 
tance of  60  feet  or  more  with  people  in  them,  and  must  have 
been  fouling  the  side  of  the  ship  the  whole  time.  In  one 
case  the  stern  post  was  wrenched  away.  The  result  was  that 
these  boats  leaked  when  they  reached  the  water.  Captain 
Anderson  was  superintending  the  launching  operations,  and, 
in  my  opinion,  did  the  best  that  could  be  done  in  the  cir- 
cumstances. Many  boats  were  lowered  on  the  starboard  side, 
and  there  is  no  satisfactory  evidence  that  any  of  them  leaked. 

There  were  doubtless  some  accidents  in  the  handling  of 
the  ropes,  but  it  is  impossible  to  impute  negligence  or  in- 
competence in  connection  with  them. 

The  conclusion  at  which  I  arrive  is  that  the  boats  were 
in  good  order  at  the  moment  of  the  explosion  and  that  the 
launching  was  carried  out  as  well  as  the  short  time,  the  mov- 
ing ship  and  the  serious  list  would  allow. 

Both  the  Captain  and  Mr.  Jones,  the  First  Officer,  in  their 
evidence  state  that  everything  was  done  that  was  possible  to 
get  the  boats  out  and  to  save  lives,  and  this  I  believe  to  be  true. 

The  Navigation  of  the  Ship 

At  the  request  of  the  Attorney-General  part  of  the  evi- 
dence in  the  inquiry  was  taken  in  camera.  This  course  was 
adopted  in  the  public  interest.  The  evidence  in  question 
dealt,  firstly,  with  certain  advice  given  by  the  Admiralty  to 
navigators  generally  with  reference  to  precautions  to  be  taken 
for  the  purpose  of  avoiding  submarine  attacks ;  and  sec- 
ondly, with  information  furnished  by  the  Admiralty  to  Cap- 
tain Turner  individually  of  submarine  dangers  likely  to  be 
encountered  by  him  in  the  voyage  of  the  Lusitania.  It  was 
made  abundantly  plain  to  me  that  the  Admiralty  had  devoted 
the  most  anxious  care  and  thought  to  the  questions  arising 
out  of  the  submarine  peril,  and  that  they  had  diligently  col- 
lected all  available  information  likely  to  affect  the  voyage  of 
the  Lusitania  in  this  connection.  I  do  not  know  who  the  offi- 
cials were  to  whom  these  duties  were  entrusted,  but  they 
deserve  the  highest  praise  for  the  way  in  which  they  did  their 
work. 


THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSiTANIA       195 

Captain  Turner  was  fully  advised  as  to  the  means  which 
in  the  view  of  the  Admiralty  were  best  calculated  to  avert  the 
perils  he  was  likely  to  encounter,  and  in  considering  the 
question  whether  he  is  to  blame  for  the  catastrophe  in  which 
his  voyage  ended  I  have  to  bear  this  circumstance  in  mind. 
It  is  certain  that  in  some  respects  Captain  Turner  did  not 
follow  the  advice  given  to  him.  It  may  be  (though  I  seri- 
ously doubt  it)  that  had  he  done  so  his  ship  would  have 
reached  Liverpool  in  safety.  But  the  question  remains,  was 
his  conduct  the  conduct  of  a  negligent  or  of  an  incompetent 
man.  On  this  question  I  have  sought  the  guidance  of  my 
assessors,  who  have  rendered  me  invaluable  assistance,  and 
the  conclusion  at  which  I  have  arrived  is  that  blame  ought 
not  to  be  imputed  to  the  Captain.  The  advice  given  to  him, 
although  meant  for  his  most  serious  and  careful  considera- 
tion, was  not  intended  to  deprive  him  of  the  right  to  exercise 
his  skilled  judgment  in  the  difficult  questions  that  might 
arise  from  time  to  time  in  the  navigation  of  his  ship.  His 
omission  to  follow  the  advice  in  all  respects  cannot  fairly 
be  attributed  either  to  negligence  or  incompetence. 

He  exercised  his  judgment  for  the  best.  It  was  the  judg- 
ment of  a  skilled  and  experienced  man,  and  although  others 
might  have  acted  differently  and  perhaps  more  successfully, 
he  ought  not,  in  my  opinion,  to  be  blamed. 

The  whole  blame  for  the  cruel  destruction  of  life  in  this 
catastrophe  must  rest  solely  with  those  who  plotted  and 
with  those  who  committed  the  crime. 

BY  GOTTFRIED  VON  JAGOW 
Official    German    Statement 

Berlin,  May  28,  191 5. 
The  Imperial  Government  has  subjected  the  statements 
of  the  Government  of  the  United  States  to  a  careful  exami- 
nation and  has  the  lively  wish  on  its  part  also  to  contribute 
in  a  convincing  and  friendly  manner  to  clear  up  any  misun- 
derstandings which  may  have  entered  into  the  relations  of 
the  two  Governments  through  the  events  mentioned  by  the 
American  Government. 


196        THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSITANIA 

With  regard  firstly  to  the  cases  of  the  American  steamers 
dishing  and  Gul flight,  the  American  Embassy  has  already 
been  informed  that  it  is  far  from  the  German  Government 
to  have  any  intention  of  ordering  attacks  by  submarines  or 
flyers  on  neutral  vessels  in  the  zone  which  have  not  been 
guilty  of  any  hostile  act;  on  the  contrary,  the  most  explicit 
instructions  have  been  repeatedly  given  the  German  armed 
forces  to  avoid  attacking  such  vessels.  If  neutral  vessels 
have  come  to  grief  through  the  German  submarine  war  dur- 
ing the  past  few  months  by  mistake,  it  is  a  question  of  iso- 
lated and  exceptional  cases  which  are  traceable  to  the  misuse 
of  flags  by  the  British  Government  in  connection  with  care- 
lessness or  suspicious  actions  on  the  part  of  the  captains  of 
the  vessels.  In  all  cases  where  a  neutral  vessel  through  no 
fault  of  its  own  has  come  to  grief  through  the  German 
submarines  or  flyers  according  to  the  facts  as  ascertained  by 
the  German  Government,  this  Government  has  expressed 
its  regret  at  the  unfortunate  occurrence  and  promised  indem- 
nification where  the  facts  justified  it.  The  German  Gov- 
ernment will  treat  the  cases  of  the  American  steamers  Cash- 
ing and  Gulflight  according  to  the  same  principles.  An  in- 
vestigation of  these  cases  is  in  progress.  Its  results  will  be 
communicated  to  the  Embassy  shortly.  The  investigation 
might,  if  thought  desirable,  be  supplemented  by  an  Interna- 
tional Commission  of  Inquiry,  pursuant  to  Title  Three  of 
The  Hague  Convention  of  October  18,  1907,  for  the  pacific 
settlement  of  international  disputes. 

In  the  case  of  the  sinking  of  the  English  steamer  Falaba, 
the  commander  of  the  German  submarine  had  the  intention 
of  allowing  passengers  and  crew  ample  opportunity  to  save 
themselves. 

It  was  not  until  the  captain  disregarded  the  order  to  lay 
to  and  took  to  flight,  sending  up  rocket  signals  for  help,  that 
the  German  commander  ordered  the  crew  and  passengers  by 
signals  and  megaphone  to  leave  the  ship  within  ten  minutes. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  allowed  them  twenty-three  minutes 
and  did  not  fire  the  torpedo  until  suspicious  steamers  were 
hurrying  to  the  aid  of  the  Falaba. 

With  regard  to  the  loss  of  life  when  the  British  passenger 


THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSITANIA       197 

steamer  Lusitania  was  sunk,  the  German  Government  has 
already  expressed  its  deep  regret  to  the  neutral  Govern- 
ments concerned  that  nationals  of  those  countries  lost  their 
lives  on  that  occasion.  The  Imperial  Government  must  state 
for  the  rest  the  impression  that  certain  important  facts  most 
directly  connected  with  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania  may 
have  escaped  the  attention  of  the  Government  of  the  United 
States.  It  therefore  considers  it  necessary  in  the  interest  of 
the  clear  and  full  understanding  aimed  at  by  either  Govern- 
ment primarily  to  convince  itself  that  the  reports  of  the  facts 
which  are  before  the  two  Governments  are  complete  and  in 
agreement. 

The  Government  of  the  United  States  proceeds  on  the 
assumption  that  the  Lusitania  is  to  be  considered  as  an  ordi- 
nary unarmed  merchant  vessel.  The  Imperial  Government 
begs  in  this  connection  to  point  out  that  the  Lusitania  was  one 
of  the  largest  and  fastest  English  commerce  steamers,  con- 
structed with  Government  funds  as  auxiliary  cruisers,  and  is 
expressly  included  in  the  navy  list  published  by  British  Ad- 
miralty. It  is,  moreover,  known  to  the  Imperial  Govern- 
ment from  reliable  information  furnished  by  its  officials 
and  neutral  passengers  that  for  some  time  practically  all  the 
more  valuable  English  merchant  vessels  have  been  provided 
with  guns,  ammunition  and  other  weapons,  and  reenforced 
with  a  crew  specially  practiced  in  manning  guns.  According 
to  reports  at  hand  here,  the  Lusitania  when  she  left  New 
York  undoubtedly  had  guns  on  board  which  were  mounted 
under  decks  and  masked. 

The  Imperial  Government  furthermore  has  the  honor  to 
direct  the  particular  attention  of  the  American  Government 
to  the  fact  that  the  British  Admiralty  by  a  secret  instruction 
of  February  of  this  year  advised  the  British  merchant  ma- 
rine not  only  to  seek  protection  behind  neutral  .flags  and 
markings,  but  even  when  so  disguised  to  attack  German  sub- 
marines by  ramming  them.  High  rewards  have  been  offered 
by  the  British  Government  as  a  special  incentive  for  the  de- 
struction of  the  submarines  by  merchant  vessels,  and  such 
rewards  have  already  been  paid  out.  In  view  of  these  facts, 
which  are  satisfactorily  known  to   it,   the   Imperial   Gov- 


198       THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSITANIA 

ernment  is  unable  to  consider  English  merchant  vessels  any 
longer  as  "undefended  territory"  in  the  zone  of  maritime  war 
designated  by  the  Admiralty  Staff  of  the  Imperial  German 
Navy,  the  German  commanders  are  consequently  no  longer 
in  a  position  to  observe  the  rules  of  capture  otherwise  usual 
and  with  which  they  invariably  complied  before  this.  Lastly, 
the  Imperial  Government  must  specially  point  out  that  on 
her  last  trip  the  Lusitania,  as  on  earlier  occasions,  had  Cana- 
dian troops  and  munitions  on  board,  including  no  less  than 
5,400  cases  of  ammunition  destined  for  the  destruction  of 
brave  German  soldiers  who  are  fulfilling  with  self-sacrifice 
and  devotion  their  duty  in  the  service  of  the  Fatherland. 
The  German  Government  believes  that  it  acts  in  just  self- 
defense  when  it  seeks  to  protect  the  lives  of  its  soldiers  by 
destroying  ammunition  destined  for  the  enemy  with  the 
means  of  war  at  its  command.  The  English  steamship  com- 
pany must  have  been  aware  of  the  dangers  to  which  pas- 
sengers on  board  the  Lusitania  were  exposed  under  the  cir- 
cumstances. In  taking  them  on  board  in  spite  of  this  the 
company  quite  deliberately  tried  to  use  the  lives  of  Ameri- 
can citizens  as  protection  for  the  ammunition  carried,  and 
violated  the  clear  provisions  of  American  laws  which  ex- 
pressly prohibit,  and  provide  punishment  for,  the  carrying 
of  passengers  on  ships  which  have  explosives  on  board.  The 
company  thereby  wantonly  caused  the  death  of  so  many  pas- 
sengers. According  to  the  express  report  of  the  submarine 
commander  concerned,  which  is  further  confirmed  by  all 
other  reports,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  rapid  sinking  of 
the  Lusitania  was  primarily  due  to  the  explosion  of  the  cargo 
of  ammunition  caused  by  the  torpedo.2  Otherwise,  in  all 
human  probability,  the  passengers  would  have  been  saved. 
The  Imperial  Government  holds  the  facts  recited  above 
to  be  of  sufficient  importance  to  recommend  them  to  a  careful 
examination  by  the  American  Government.  The  Imperial 
Government  begs  to  reserve  a  final  statement  of  its  position 

3  All  charges  that  the  Lusitania  had  explosives  or  guns  aboard  were 
definitely  disproved  by  the  legal  proceedings  conducted  before  Justice 
Mayer  in  the  United  States  courts. 


THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSITANIA       199 

with  regard  to  the  demands  made  in  connection  with  the 
sinking  of  the  Lusitania  until  a  reply  is  received  from  the 
American  Government,  and  believes  that  it  should  recall  here 
that  it  took  note  with  satisfaction  of  the  proposals  of  good 
offices  submitted  by  the  American  Government  in  Berlin  and 
London  with  a  view  to  paving  the  way  for  a  modus  Vivendi 
for  the  conduct  of  maritime  war  between  Germany  and 
Great  Britain.  The  Imperial' Government  furnished  at  that 
time  ample  evidence  of  its  good  will  by  its  willingness  to 
consider  these  proposals.  The  realization  of  these  proposals 
failed,  as  is  known,  on  account  of  their  rejection  by  the 
Government  of  Great  Britain. 

BY    WOODROW    WILSON 
Official  Address  to  the  German  Government 

The  Government  of  the  United  States  notes  with  gratifi- 
cation the  full  recognition  by  the  Imperial  German  Gov- 
ernment, in  discussing  the  cases  of  the  Cushing  and  the  Gulf- 
light,  of  the  principle  of  the  freedom  of  all  parts  of  the  open 
sea  to  neutral  ships  and  the  frank  willingness  of  the  Im- 
perial German  Government  to  acknowledge  and  meet  its 
liability  where  the  fact  of  attack  upon  neutral  ships  "which 
have  not  been  guilty  of  any  hostile  act"  by  German  aircraft 
or  vessels  of  war  is  satisfactorily  established;  and  the  Gov- 
ernment of  the  United  States  will  in  due  course  lay  before 
the  Imperial  German  Government,  as  it  requests,  full  in- 
formation concerning  the  attack  on  the  steamer  Cushing. 

With  regard  to  the  sinking  of  the  steamer  Falaba,  by 
which  an  American  citizen  lost  his  life,  the  Government  of 
the  United  States  is  surprised  to  find  the  Imperial  German 
Government  contending  that  an  effort  on  the  part  of  a  mer- 
chantman to  escape  capture  and  secure  assistance  alters  the 
obligation  of  the  officer  seeking  to  make  the  capture  in  re- 
spect of  the  safety  of  the  lives  of  those  on  board  the  mer- 
chantman, although  the  vessel  had  ceased  her  attempt  to 
escape  when  torpedoed.  These  are  not  new  circumstances. 
They  have  been  in  the  minds  of  statesmen  and  of  interna- 
tional jurists  throughout  the  development  of  naval  warfare, 
and  the  Government  of  the  United  States  does  not  under- 


200       THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSITANIA 

stand  that  they  have  ever  been  held  to  alter  the  principles 
of  humanity  upon  which  it  has  insisted.  Nothing  but  actual 
forcible  resistance  or  continued  efforts  to  escape  by  flight 
when  ordered  to  stop  for  the  purpose  of  visit  on  the  part  of 
the  merchantman  has  ever  been  held  to  forfeit  the  lives  of  her 
passengers  or  crew.  The  Government  of  the  United  States, 
however,  does  not  understand  that  the  Imperial  German 
Government  is  seeking  in  this  case  to  relieve  itself  of  liabil- 
ity, but  only  intends  to  set  forth  the  circumstances  which 
led  the  commander  of  the  submarine  to  allow  himself  to  be 
hurried  into  the  course  which  he  took. 

Your  Excellency's  note,  in  discussing  the  loss  of  Ameri- 
can lives  resulting  from  the  sinking  of  the  steamship  Lusi- 
tania, adverts  at  some  length  to  certain  information  which 
the  Imperial  German  Government  has  received  with  regard 
to  the  character  and  outfit  of  that  vessel,  and  your  Excel- 
lency expresses  the  fear  that  this  information  may  not  have 
been  brought  to  the  attention  of  the  Government  of  the 
United  States.  It  is  stated  in  the  note  that  the  Lusitania  was 
undoubtedly  equipped  with  masked  guns,  supplied  with 
trained  gunners  and  special  ammunition,  transporting  troops 
from  Canada,  carrying  a  cargo  not  permitted  under  the  laws 
of  the  United  States  to  a  vessel  also  carrying  passengers, 
and  serving,  in  virtual  effect,  as  an  auxiliary  to  the  naval 
forces  of  Great  Britain.  Fortunately  these  are  matters 
concerning  which  the  Government  of  the  United  States  is  in 
a  position  to  give  the  Imperial  German  Government  official 
information.  Of  the  facts  alleged  in  your  Excellency's  note, 
if  true,  the  Government  of  the  United  States  would  have 
been  bound  to  take  official  cognizance  in  performing  its 
recognized  duty  as  a  neutral  power  and  in  enforcing  its  na- 
tional laws.  It  was  its  duty  to  see  to  it  that  the  Lusitania 
was  not  armed  for  offensive  action,  that  she  was  not  serving 
as  a  transport,  that  she  did  not  carry  a  cargo  prohibited 
by  the  statutes  of  the  United  States,  and  that,  if  in  fact  she 
was  a  naval  vessel  of  Great  Britain,  she  should  not  receive 
clearance  as  a  merchantman;  and  it  performed  that  duty  and 
enforced  its  statutes  with  scrupulous  vigilance  through  its 
regularly  constituted  officials.    It  is  able,  therefore,  to  assure 


THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSITANIA       201 

the  Imperial  German  Government  that  it  has  been  misin- 
formed. If  the  Imperial  German  Government  should  deem 
itself  to  be  in  possession  of  convincing  evidence  that  the 
officials  of  the  Government  of  the  United  States  did  not 
perform  these  duties  with  thoroughness,  the  Government  of 
the  United  States  sincerely  hopes  that  it  will  submit  that 
evidence  for  consideration. 

Whatever  may  be  the  contentions  of  the  Imperial  German 
Government  regarding  the  carriage  of  contraband  of  war 
on  board  the  Lusitania  or  regarding  the  explosion  of  that 
material  by  the  torpedo,  it  need  only  be  said  that  in  the  view 
of  this  Government  these  contentions  are  irrelevant  to  the 
question  of  the  legality  of  the  methods  used  by  the  German 
naval  authorities  in  sinking  the  vessel. 

But  the  sinking  of  passenger  ships  involves  principles 
of  humanity  which  throw  into  the  background  any  special  cir- 
cumstances of  detail  that  may  be  thought  to  affect  the  cases, 
principles  which  lift  it,  as  the  Imperial  German  Government 
will  no  doubt  be  quick  to  recognize  and  acknowledge,  out 
of  the  class  of  ordinary  subjects  of  diplomatic  discussion 
or  of  international  controversy.  Whatever  be  the  other 
facts  regarding  the  Lusitania,  the  principal  fact  is  that  a 
great  steamer,  primarily  and  chiefly  a  conveyance  for  pas- 
sengers, and  carrying  more  than  a  thousand  souls  who  had 
no  part  or  lot  in  the  conduct  of  the  war,  was  torpedoed 
and  sunk  without  so  much  as  a  challenge  or  a  warning, 
and  that  men,  women,  and  children  were  sent  to  their  death 
in  circumstances  unparalleled  in  modern  warfare.  The  fact 
that  more  than  one  hundred  American  citizens  were  among 
those  who  perished  made  it  the  duty  of  the  Government  of 
the  United  States  to  speak  of  these  things  and  once  more, 
with  solemn  emphasis,  to  call  the  attention  of  the  Imperial 
German  Government  to  the  grave  responsibility  which  the 
Government  of  the  United  States  conceives  that  it  has  in- 
curred in  this  tragic  occurrence,  and  to  the  indisputable  prin- 
ciple upon  which  that  responsibility  rests.  The  Government 
of  the  United  States  is  contending  for  something  much 
greater  than  mere  rights  of  property  or  privileges  of  com- 
merce.    It  is  contending  for  nothing  less  high  and  sacred 


202        THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSITANIA 

than  the  rights  of  humanity,  which  every  Government  hon- 
ors itself  in  respecting  and  which  no  Government  is  justified 
in  resigning  on  behalf  of  those  under  its  care  and  authority. 
Only  her  actual  resistance  to  capture  or  refusal  to  stop  when 
ordered  to  do  so  for  the  purpose  of  visit  could  have  af- 
forded the  commander  of  the  submarine  any  justification 
for  so  much  as  putting  the  lives  of  those  on  board  the  ship 
in  jeopardy.  This  principle  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  understands  the  explicit  instructions  issued  on  Au- 
gust 3,  1914,3  by  the  Imperial  German  Admiralty  to  its  com- 
manders at  sea  to  have  recognized  and  embodied,  as  do  the 
naval  codes  of  all  other  nations,  and  upon  it  every  traveler 
and  seaman  had  a  right  to  depend.  It  is  upon  this  princi- 
ple of  humanity  as  well  as  upon  the  law  founded  upon  this 
principle  that  the  United  States  must  stand. 

The  Government  of  the  United  States  is  happy  to  observe 
that  your  Excellency's  note  closes  with  the  intimation  that 
the  Imperial  German  Government  is  willing,  now  as  before, 
to  accept  the  good  offices  of  the  United  States  in  an  attempt 
to  come  to  an  understanding  with  the  Government  of  Great 
Britain  by  which  the  character  and  conditions  of  the  war 
upon  the  sea  may  be  changed.  The  Government  of  the  United 
States  would  consider  it  a  privilege  thus  to  serve  its  friends 
and  the  world.  It  stands  ready  at  any  time  to  convey  to 
either  Government  any  intimation  or  suggestion  the  other 
may  be  willing  to  have  it  convey  and  cordially  invites  the 
Imperial  German  Government  to  make  use  of  its  services  in 
this  way  at  its  convenience.     The  whole  world  is  concerned 

3  The  reference  made  by  President  Wilson  in  his  first  note  of  May 
13th  to  the  German  Government  regarding  the  sinking  of  the  Lusi- 
tania  to  the  "humane  and  enlightened  attitude  hitherto  assumed  by 
the  Imperial  German  Government  in  matters  of  international  right, 
and  particularly  with  regard  to  the  freedom  of  the  seas,"  was  based 
upon  the  instructions  of  August  3,  1914,  which  the  German  Govern- 
ment sent  to  its  naval  commanders.  These  German  rules  are  now  in 
the  possession  of  the  State  Department.  While  no  mention  is  made 
in  them  of  submarine  warfare,  the  extent  and  method  of  the  exercise 
of  the  right  of  search  and  the  stoppage  of  ships  is  prescribed  with 
great  nicety,  and  provision  is  made  for  the  safety  of  passengers  and 
crew.  After  outlining  the  purpose  of  visiting  and  searching  vessels, 
they  say:  "Before  destruction  all  persons  on  board,  if  possible  with 
their  personal  effects,  are  to  be  placed  in  safety." 


THE  SINKING  OF  THE  LUSITANIA       203 

in  anything  that  may  bring  about  even  a  partial  accommoda 
tion  of  interests  or  in  any  way  mitigate  the  terrors  of  the 
present  distressing  conflict. 

In  the  meantime,  whatever  arrangement  may  happily  be 
made  between  the  parties  to  the  war,  and  whatever  may  in 
the  opinion  of  the  Imperial  German  Government  have  been 
the  provocation  or  the  circumstantial  justification  for  the 
past  acts  of  its  commanders  at  sea,  the  Government  of  the 
United  States  confidently  looks  to  see  the  justice  and  hu- 
manity of  the  Government  of  Germany  vindicated  in  all 
cases  where  Americans  have  been  wronged  or  their  rights 
as  neutrals  invaded. 

The  Government  of  the  United  States  therefore  very 
earnestly  and  very  solemnly  renews  the  representations  of 
its  note  transmitted  to  the  Imperial  German  Government 
on  the  15th  of  May,  and  relies  in  these  representations  upon 
the  principles  of  humanity,  the  universally  recognized  un- 
derstandings of  international  law,  and  the  ancient  friendship 
of  the  German  Nation. 

The  Government  of  the  United  States  cannot  admit  that 
the  proclamation  of  a  war  zone  from  which  neutral  ships 
have  been  warned  to  keep  away  may  be  made  to  operate 
as  in  any  degree  an  abbreviation  of  the  rights  either  of 
American  shipmasters  or  of  American  citizens  bound  on 
lawful  errands  as  passengers  on  merchant  ships  of  bel- 
ligerent nationality.  It  does  not  understand  the  Imperial 
German  Government  to  question  those  rights.  It  under- 
stands it,  also,  to  accept  as  established  beyond  question  the 
principle  that  the  lives  of  non-combatants  cannot  lawfully 
or  rightfully  be  put  in  jeopardy  by  the  capture  or  destruc- 
tion of  an  unresisting  merchantman,  and  to  recognize  the 
obligation  to  take  sufficient  precaution  to  ascertain  whether 
a  suspected  merchantman  is  in  fact  of  belligerent  nationality 
or  is  in  fact  carrying  contraband  of  war  under  a  neutral  flag. 
The  Government  of  the  United  States  therefore  deems  it 
reasonable  to  expect  that  the  Imperial  German  Government 
will  adopt  the  measures  necessary  to  put  these  principles  into 
practice  in  respect  of  the  safeguarding  of  American  lives  and 
ships,  and  asks  for  assurances  that  this  will  be  done. 


BRITAIN  DEMOCRATIZED  UNDER  LLOYD 

GEORGE 

THE  MUNITIONS  CRISIS 

MAY   25TH 

JULES  DESTRE'e  GEORGES   CLEMENCEAU 

The  Britain  which  emerged  from  the  Great  War  was  a  wholly  dif- 
ferent country  under  a  different  form  of  government  from  the  Brit- 
ain which  had  entered  the  struggle  in  1914.  The  great  change  took 
place  in  1915  when  the  mass  of  the  people  took  over  government 
control  from  the  aristocratic  leaders  to  whom  the  masses  had  so  long 
bowed.  The  most  important  date  in  this  slow  moving  and  progressive 
change  was  May  25th,  when  a  new  British  Cabinet  was  formed  in 
which  the  chosen  leader  of  the  masses  took  a  prominent  part  as  Min- 
ister of  Munitions.  Later,  this  same  leader,  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  was 
made  Prime  Minister  and  as  such  carried  the  war  to  its  successful 
close;  but  for  the  moment  the  all-important  position  was  this  newly 
created  Ministry  of  Munitions.  By  it  the  working  classes  of  Britain 
were  drawn  into  doing  their  full  part  for  victory — and  right  well  they 
did  it.  They  thus  learned  their  power,  and  learned  to  use  their  power  ; 
and  never  again  could  it  be  taken  from  them. 

Up  to  that  time  Britain  had  been  "muddling  along,"  her  leaders 
working  earnestly  for  victory,  but  always  with  the  detached  British 
sense  of  being  secure  on  their  island,  and  thus  able  to  do  beyond 
the  island  as  much  or  as  little  as  they  chose,  and  at  their  own  good 
leisure.  Slowly  in  1915  the  success  of  the  German  submarine  attack 
roused  them  from  their  imperturbability.  They  saw  that  for  them  as 
for  France,  invasion,  starvation,  even  ultimate  defeat,  was  no  longer 
impossible.  They  must  fight  harder  or  must  perish.  So  they  did  the 
one  thing  possible,  took  their  people  into  their  confidence,  confessed 
the    country's   need,    and    called    Democracy   to    their    aid. 

The  first  great  need,  as  Neuve  Chapelle  and  the  Dunajec  had  shown, 
was  ammunition,  and  after  that  every  form  of  war  supplies.  Lloyd 
George  summoned  the  people  to  create  these.  How  they  succeeded 
we  have  let  their  allies  tell.  The  French  Premier,  Clemenceau,  like 
Lloyd  George  a  product  of  the  stern  necessity  of  the  War,  here  esti- 
mates the  work  of  his  great  confrere.  Another  well-known  French- 
man, the  author  Destree,   describes  the   steps  of  the  transformation. 

BY   JULES   DESTREE 

ON  May  14,  191 5,  The  Times  Military  Correspondent 
on  the  Western  front  wrote  that  the  absence  of  an 
unlimited  supply  of  high  explosives  had  proved  a  fatal  ob- 

204 


BRITAIN  DEMOCRATIZED  205 

stack  to  success.  In  saying  this  he  gave  free  and  open  ex- 
pression to  criticisms  that  had  been  rife  in  the  lobby  of  the 
House  of  Commons  and  in  private  circles  for  a  long  time 
past.  The  failure  of  the  British  Army  to  reap  the  full  fruits 
of  its  splendid  achievements  at  Neuve  Chapelle,  and  the 
ebb  and  flow  in  the  defense  of  Hill  60  on  April  17th  were 
cases  in  point.  An  energetic  campaign  was  organized  in 
the  newspapers  after  the  publication  of  The  Times  letter. 
Questions  were  put  in  the  Commons.  Popular  feeling  was 
deeply  stirred. 

This  feeling  was  unquestionably  justified.  The  War 
Office  had  displayed  a  lack  of  foresight  in  its  arrangements 
for  the  production  of  munitions,  a  shortcoming  which  it 
shared,  however,  with  the  other  partners  in  the  Alliance;  of 
that  the  Russian  reverses  afforded  decisive  proof. 

The  daily  output  of  munitions  did  not  equal  the  neces- 
sary consumption.  How  immense  this  consumption  is,  it 
would  be  difficult  to  realize  did  we  not  know  that  the  number 
of  shells  consumed  at  Neuve  Chapelle  alone  was  greater 
than  the  total  employed  in  the  whole  South  African  cam- 
paign. 

Moreover,  the  English  factories  had  manufactured  a 
great  quantity  of  shrapnel,  but  only  a  comparatively  re- 
stricted supply  of  high  explosives.  This  was  diametrically 
opposed  to  the  requirements  of  the  situation.  In  fact,  the 
nature  of  the  terrain  and  the  strength  of  the  enemy's  de- 
fensive works  were  such  that,  before  an  infantry  attack 
could  be  launched,  even  under  protection  of  shrapnel  fire,  it 
was  necessary  that  the  hostile  positions  should  be  subjected 
to  such  a  deluge  of  high  explosives  as  to  render  the  most 
thoroughly  organized  defenses  untenable. 

These  defects  having  been  made  manifest  by  bitter  ex- 
perience, measures  were  taken  to  remedy  them. 

May  25,  191 5,  witnessed  the  formation  of  the  Coalition 
Government  in  England.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  became  head 
of  a  newly-created  department — the  Ministry  of  Munitions. 
No  better  appointment  could  have  been  made.  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  was  endowed  with  conspicuous  organizing  ability  and 
possessed  great  influence  with  the  working  classes.     The 


206  BRITAIN  DEMOCRATIZED 

new  Minister  lost  no  time  in  setting  to  work.  He  remedied 
the  most  urgent  defects  and,  a  month  later,  laid  on  the  table 
of  the  House  the  Munitions  Bill  that  was  to  solve  the  great 
problem  once  for  all. 

To  realize  the  immensity  of  the  task  performed  by  the 
present  Ministry  of  Munitions  it  is  necessary  to  read  the 
two  speeches  delivered  by  Mr.  Lloyd  George  in  the  House 
of  Commons  on  June  23  and  July  28,  191 5.  These  frank 
and  open  statements  show  us  both  the  difficulties  that  had 
to  be  confronted  and  the  manner  in  which  they  were  over- 
come. 

The  problem  may  be  stated  as  follows : 

Experience  had  shown  that  of  the  two  opposing  forces, 
the  advantage  would  rest  with  the  one  that  could  outdo  the 
other  in  the  expenditure  of  munitions.  From  that  time 
onwards  the  question  ceased  to  be  a  purely  military  one : 
it  became  a  labor  question.  It  was  in  the  workshops,  the 
factories,  the  arsenals,  that  victory  was  to  be  wrought  out. 

This  had  been  perfectly  well  understood  by  the  Germans, 
and  in  this  as  in  so  many  other  respects  they  had  the  ad- 
vantage over  the  Allies  of  preparation  and  foresight.  These 
preparations  were  of  twTo  kinds.  They  consisted,  in  the 
first  place,  in  the  accumulation  of  reserves  of  munitions  and 
of  the  raw  material  necessary  for  their  manufacture;  and, 
secondly,  in  the  measures  insuring  the  immediate  and  ef- 
fective mobilization  of  the  national  industries  for  the  sole 
and  exclusive  purpose  of  carrying  on  the  war.  The  Cen- 
tral Empires  were  able  to  turn  out  250,000  shells  a  day,  or 
nearly  8,000,000  a  month.  The  British  rate  of  production 
was  2,500  high  explosive  shells  and  13,000  shrapnel  shells 
a  day.  Thus,  the  problem  before  the  Allies  was  first  of  all 
to  equal  and  then  to  surpass  the  formidable  productive 
capabilities  of  their  adversaries.  The  sooner  they  did  so, 
the  sooner  victory  would  be  theirs. 

England's  reserves  in  the  matter  of  labor  and  machinery 
were  immense.  But  they  were  all  unsystematized.  The 
problem  was  to  organize  these  resources,  and  to  organize 
them  without  delay. 

Mr.  Lloyd  George's  first  step  was  to  select  his  staff.    A 


BRITAIN  DEMOCRATIZED  207 

large  number  of  business  men,  technical  engineers,  and  others 
freely  placed  their  services  at  his  disposal,  most  of  them 
without  demanding  any  remuneration  from  the  State.  Each 
one  of  them  was  put  in  charge  of  a  particular  branch,  e.g., 
metals,  explosives,  machinery,  labor,  chemical  research,  and 
so  on. 

But  Mr.  Lloyd  George's  principal  aim  being  to  obtain 
quick  returns,  he  regarded  it  as  an  urgent  necessity  to  de- 
centralize the  work  as  much  as  possible.  The  United  King- 
dom was  split  up  into  a  certain  number  of  districts;  special 
committees  were  formed  for  the  purpose  of  organizing  the 
work  in  each  district.  They  consisted  of  local  business  men 
who  were  familiar  with  the  resources  and  the  labor  condi- 
tions of  the  place;  of  engineers  who,  in  order  to  fit  them  for 
their  duties,  had  undergone  a  brief  period  of  service  in  the 
Government  Arsenals  or  in  one  of  the  following  works : 
Elswick,  Vickers-Maxim,  or  Beardmore;  and  of  a  technical 
engineer  and  a  Secretary  in  touch  with  the  Ministry  of 
Munitions. 

One  of  the  great  difficulties  was  the  matter  of  raw  ma- 
terial. Some  England  possessed  in  abundance,  some  could 
only  be  obtained  with  difficulty.  The  department  had  also 
to  see  to  it  that  no  attempt  was  made  by  unscrupulous  sup- 
pliers to  make  a  corner  in  their  goods.  The  doings  of  the 
metal  markets  were  carefully  looked  into,  with  immediately 
beneficial  results. 

Having  provided  the  raw  material,  the  next  thing  was 
to  get  to  work  on  it.     Where  was  the  plant  to  come  from? 

A  vast  registration  scheme  was  set  on  foot,  and  in  a 
short  time  the  Government  had  an  accurate  idea  of  the  ma- 
chinery at  their  disposal.  As  soon  as  the  process  of  classi- 
fication was  completed  it  was  of  course  evident  that  what 
was  chiefly  lacking  were  certain  machines  required  in  the 
manufacture  of  large  shells.  The  Government  thereupon 
took  all  the  big  machine  works  under  its  direct  control  for 
the  duration  of  the  war.  Henceforth  these  works  were 
Government  works,  and  on  July  28,  191 5,  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
remarked  with  satisfaction  that  there  had  not  been  a  word 
of  protest  on  the  part  of  any  machine-tool  manufacturers, 


2o8  BRITAIN  DEMOCRATIZED 

although  the  change  involved  a  considerable  diminution  in 
their  profits.  Owing  to  this  measure,  supplemented  by  the 
creation  of  a  committee  of  machine-tool  manufacturers  of 
the  United  Kingdom,  the  output  of  material  required  for 
the  manufacture  of  munitions  was  greatly  increased,  and 
will  increase  still  further  as  time  goes  on. 

The  Government  was  thus  able  to  reorganize  the  pro- 
duction works  themselves.  These  were  of  two  kinds.  First, 
there  were  the  munition  works  properly  so  called,  where 
it  was  necessary  to  extend  the  plant  or  increase  the  rate  of 
production.  Then  there  were  factories  which  had  to  be 
altered  so  as  to  adapt  them  to  the  new  kind  of  work.  Finally, 
the  Government  decided  to  create  sixteen  large  works — a 
number  subsequently  increased  to  twenty-six — the  equip- 
ment of  which  is  being  carried  out  with  the  utmost  dispatch. 

The  next  thing  was  to  organize  the  labor  and  recruit 
fresh  hands.  There  was  a  choice  of  two  methods,  the 
compulsory  and  the  voluntary.  After  going  into  the  mat- 
ter with  the  Trades  Union  leaders  it  was  the  latter  method 
that  was  decided  upon.  It  was  more  in  accordance  with 
English  traditions  and  sentiment.  A  vast  recruiting  cam- 
paign was  started,  the  headquarters  being  the  town  hall,  in 
one  hundred  and  eighty  different  centers.  It  lasted  a  week, 
and  was  an  immense  success.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  stated, 
on  July  23,  191 5,  that  the  Government  had  got  together 
100,000  workmen,  most  of  whom  were  experts  in  machinery 
and  shipbuilding.  True,  it  was  not  possible  to  employ  them 
all,  some  already  doing  Government  work,  others  being 
indispensable  to  the  civil  life  of  the  country.  But  when  all 
deductions  were  made  it  was  found  that  the  number  of  men 
was  amply  sufficient  for  present  needs.  To  them  we  must 
add  the  skilled  workmen  who  had  joined  the  army  and  who, 
as  far  as  possible,  were  brought  home  to  serve  their  coun- 
try in  an  industrial  capacity. 

All  the  workmen  were  assigned  either  to  the  works  al- 
ready in  existence — which  in  many  cases  were  short  of 
hands  and  unable  for  this  reason  to  fulfill  their  contracts — 
or  else  they  were  allotted  to  the  new  factories. 

But  in  view  of  influence  wielded  by  the  Labor  Unions, 


BRITAIN  DEMOCRATIZED  209 

various  provisions  were  inserted  in  the  Munitions  Act.  They 
related  to  the  settlement  of  labor  disputes,  and  to  the  pro- 
hibition of  strikes  and  lock-outs  the  grounds  for  which  had 
not  been  submitted  to  the  Board  of  Trade. 

To  obviate  such  disputes,  which  were  generally  called 
forth  by  the  excessive  profits  accruing  to  the  employers  and 
the  demands  of  the  wage-earners,  the  system  of  "Controlled 
Establishments"  was  instituted.  Every  establishment  en- 
gaged on  munition  work  was  placed,  so  far  as  the  regula- 
tion of  profits  and  salaries  was  concerned,  under  direct  Gov- 
ernment control.  Any  modification  in  the  rate  of  wages  had 
to  be  submitted  to  the  Ministry  of  Munitions,  which  had 
power  to  refer  the  question  to  an  Arbitration  Board  spe- 
cially set  up  by  the  Act. 

To  complete  this  rapid  survey  it  must  be  added  that  a 
department  was  created  by  the  Ministry  of  Munitions,  un- 
der the  control  of  an  Under-Secretary,  whose  special  business 
it  was  to  examine  war  inventions. 

On  December  20,  191 5,  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  in  a  speech 
delivered  in  the  House  of  Commons,  summarized  the  results 
of  the  first  six  months  of  his  tenure  of  office. 

From  every  point  of  view  his  report  was  exceedingly 
satisfactory.     We  will  take  a  few  points. 

Orders  placed  before  the  formation  of  the  department 
were  delivered  with  an  increase  of  16  per  cent,  on  previous 
deliveries.  The  number  of  new  orders  placed  increased  by 
80  per  cent. 

The  State  regulation  of  the  metal  market  resulted  in  a 
saving  of  from  15  to  20  million  pounds  sterling. 

The  output  of  shells  for  a  single  week  became  three  times 
as  great  as  the  entire  output  for  May,  191 5,  which  means 
that  the  rate  of  production  was  twelve  times  as  great. 

The  enormous  quantity  of  shells  consumed  during  the 
offensive  of  September,  191 5,  was  made  good  in  a  month. 

The  output  of  machine  guns  was  five  times  as  great;  that 
of  hand  grenades  increased  forty  fold. 

The  production  of  heavy  artillery  was  accelerated,  and 
the  heaviest  guns  of  the  early  days  of  the  war  are  now 
among  the  lightest. 

W.,  VOL.  III.— 14. 


210  BRITAIN  DEMOCRATIZED 

An  explosive  factory  in  the  South  of  England  which 
on  October  15,  191 5,  started  to  fill  bombs  at  the  rate  of  500 
a  week  with  a  staff  of  60  was  in  March,  1916,  turning  out 
15,000  a  week,  with  a  staff  of  250. 

An  entirely  new  factory  which  started  work  at  the  end 
of  October,  191 5,  with  one  filling  shed  and  six  girl  fillers 
and  an  output  of  270  a  week,  was,  in  March,  1916,  employing 
175  girls  and  handling  15,000  bombs  a  week. 

The  Ministry  of  Munitions  built  housing  accommoda- 
tion for  60,000  workers,  and  canteens  and  mess-rooms  in 
munition  works. 

The  number  of  strikes  was  reduced  to  three. 

These  figures  speak  volumes  in  themselves. 

Mr.  Kellaway,  M.  P.,  Parliamentary  Secretary  to  Dr. 
Addison  (Parliamentary  Secretary  to  the  Ministry  of  Mu- 
nitions), stated  on  July  7,  1916,  the  following  facts: 

"Of  the  4,000  controlled  firms  now  producing  munitions, 
95  per  cent,  had  never  produced  a  gun,  shell  or  cartridge 
before  the  war.  In  ten  months  they  produced  more  shells 
than  all  the  Government  arsenals  and  great  armament  shops 
existing  at  the  outbreak  of  war;  and  that  was  only  a  very 
small  percentage  of  the  total  weekly  production  of  shells 
in  the  country.  Ninety  arsenals  have  been  built  or  adapted, 
and  all  except  a  very  few  are  producing  heavy  guns,  how- 
itzers, big  shells  or  explosives.  Our  weekly  output  of  .303 
cartridges  is  greater  by  millions  than  our  annual  output 
before  the  war,  while  the  output  of  guns  and  howitzers  has 
been  increased  by  several  hundreds  per  cent.  .  .  .  One  of  our 
leading  armament  firms  has  a  factory  devoted  entirely  to  the 
provision  of  a  particular  gun  for  the  French  Government" 
— "Russia  has  been  supplied  with  great  quantities  of  gre- 
nades, rifle  cartridges,  guns  and  explosives.  .  .  ." 

We  have  already  referred  to  the  eagerness  with  which 
the  workers  responded  to  the  appeal  made  to  them  by  the 
Ministry  of  Munitions.  As  soon  as  ever  the  people  under- 
stood the  urgency  of  the  situation  thousands  upon  thou- 
sands of  fresh  hands — both  men  and  women — thronged  to 
offer  their  services  at  factory  and  workshop. 

It  should  be  noted  that  women  were  among  the  very 


BRITAIN  DEMOCRATIZED  211 

first  to  come  forward,  even  before  the  Munitions  Act  came 
into  force.  In  one  of  the  largest  and  best-known  arsenals 
in  the  north,  as  far  back  as  January,  191 5,  thousands  of 
young  girls  were  at  work,  and  65  per  cent,  of  them  were 
quite  new  to  the  task.  They  came  to  it  straight  from  their 
villages. 

The  tangible  results  of  this  effort  have  been  immense. 
At  present  the  all-important  question  of  munitions  and 
equipment  has  been  solved  so  far  as  Great  Britain  is  con- 
cerned. The  extension  of  the  British  front  proves  not  merely 
that  the  British  are  numerically  in  a  position  to  take  an  in- 
creased share  of  the  burden,  but  that  they  have  sufficient  re- 
serves of  ammunition  to  await  an  enemy  attack,  or  to  take 
the  offensive  themselves,  with  equanimity,  unbeset  by  any  of 
the  anxieties  that  troubled  them  at  Neuve  Chapelle. 

Looking  at  the  moral  aspect  of  the  thing,  the  manner  in 
which  the  English  people,  so  strongly  individualistic  in  their 
ideas,  so  stoutly  opposed  to  State  interference,  came  to 
recognize  the  necessity  of  submitting  to  a  discipline  as  strict 
as  that  introduced  by  the  Munitions  Act,  is  a  fresh  proof 
that  the  gravity  of  the  present  crisis  and  the  loftiness  of 
their  duty  are  alike  appreciated  by  them. 

This  immense  effort  is  bound  to  result,  not  merely  in 
the  British  Army's  having  everything  it  requires  and  in  its 
being  enabled  to  carry  on  the  campaign  with  effect :  it  en- 
ables a  similar  service  to  be  rendered  to  the  Allies,  whose 
industrial  centers  are  in  the  hands  of  the  enemy. 

"We  know,"  said  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  "that  the  Allies  are 
awaiting  an  effort  on  our  part  which  seems  to  be  almost 
superhuman.  That  effort  we  shall  make.  To-morrow  we 
shall  be  in  a  position  to  provide  the  people  who  are  fighting 
with  us  for  the  cause  of  humanity  with  all  that  they  need 
for  the  common  task.  It  should  be  known  that  our  wealth, 
like  our  natural  resources  and  the  output  of  our  factories,  is 
a  common  patrimony  which  we  shall  share  with  our  Allies. 
.  .  .  There  is  not  a  sacrifice  which  our  people — the  whole 
of  our  people,  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest — is  not  pre- 
pared to  make.  We  are,  and  shall  be,  sparing  in  nothing; 
we  are  seeking  day  and  night  for  an  opportunity  of  doing 


212  BRITAIN  DEMOCRATIZED 

more,  and  there  is  nothing,  nothing  in  the  world,  we  are 
not  determined  to  attempt.  Tell  those  who  have  been  dis- 
turbed by  the  Labor  situation,  of  the  magnificent  sacrifices 
which  have  been  made  by  our  trade  unions  in  renouncing 
until  the  end  of  the  war  their  dearest  privileges.  Tell  them 
that  our  workmen  are  fully  conscious  of  the  vital  importance 
of  the  task  which  is  entrusted  to  them.  Tell  them  that  the 
Government  has  now  under  its  control  all  the  factories 
capable  of  producing  guns,  rifles  and  shells,  as  well  as  all  the 
foundries  and  machine-tool  factories,  and  that  all  this  world 
of  industry  does  not  produce  a  single  pound  of  metal  which 
is  not  destined  for  the  needs  of  the  armies.  A  numerous 
and  expert  body  of  labor  is  concentrated  in  these  immense 
workshops  and  I  have  not  hesitated  to  bring  back  from  the 
front  all  the  engineers  and  other  useful  workmen.  Both 
in  the  firing  line  and  in  the  country  there  is  not  a  single 
person  who  does  not  understand  our  needs,  and  who  has 
not  endeavored  to  facilitate  my  task.  .  .  ." 

BY  GEORGES   CLEMENCEAU 

England  did  not  want  war.  It  must  be  said  once  more 
to  her  credit,  and,  alas !  to  her  confusion,  that  she  had  not 
prepared  for  it.  Had  not  Belgian  neutrality  been  violated, 
who  could  say  when  she  would  have  drawn  the  sword? 

But  now,  behold  her  in  the  midst  of  the  conflict.  Slowly, 
but  with  a  stubborn  determination  that  nothing  avails  to 
diminish  or  to  daunt,  she  has  transformed  herself  into  a 
military  power. 

She  has  accumulated  vast  numbers  of  guns,  shells,  and 
men.  She  has  fenced  herself  about  with  four  million  bayo- 
nets. Wheresoever  throughout  all  the  length  and  breadth 
of  the  earth  the  noisome  German  weed  had  taken  root,  the 
British  Tommy  has  turned  up  his  sleeves  and  set  about 
clearing  the  ground. 

People  render  thanks  to  the  British  Fleet  because,  with- 
out stirring  from  its  stations  and  without  firing  a  shot,  it 
has  destroyed  the  German  menace,  blockaded  the  enemy's 
ports,  and  insured  the  provisioning  of  our  armies.  It  is 
true!     The  silence  of  the  long  vigil  it  has  kept  detracts 


BRITAIN  DEMOCRATIZED  213 

nothing  from  its  grandeur.  But  England's  miracle  lies  not 
there.  It  is  not  on  the  sea  that  England's  miracle  has  been 
wrought.  Dreadnoughts,  cruisers,  torpedo  flotillas — these, 
after  all,  belonged  to  the  England  of  tradition.  The  reason 
why  the  ancient  Northern  Island  has  grown  in  the  esteem 
and  admiration  of  men  is  that,  for  the  first  time  in  her  im- 
memorial history,  she  has  ceased  to  be  an  island,  ceased  to 
desire  to  be  but  an  island. 

She  has  made  herself  one  with  the  continent  of  Europe 
by  giving  those  splendid  tall  sons  of  hers  who  are  fighting 
heroically  in  the  Flanders  trenches,  by  her  guns,  her  con- 
voys, and,  above  all,  by  the  lofty  serenity  with  which  she 
has  accepted  (on  our  historic  soil)  the  destiny  of  suffering 
and  passionate  strife. 

And  the  splendor  of  the  deed  resides  in  this — that  it  is 
not  the  work  of  an  hour,  but  the  inevitable  culmination  of  a 
history  of  ten  centuries. 

Other  nations  there  are  that  have  shed  more  freely  of 
their  life  blood  on  the  storied  battlefields  of  Europe.  Others 
have  withstood  the  shock  of  mightier  assaults,  and  been  called 
upon  to  oppose  with  grimmer  heroism  the  onrush  of  the  bar- 
barous foe.  No  other  nation  has  resolved  with  such  method 
and  inflexibility  to  see  through  to  the  bitter  end  the  task 
to  which  it  has  set  its  hand.  No  other  nation  has  been 
conscious  of  such  a  complete  metamorphosis  in  its  customs, 
in  the  exercise  of  its  rights  and  its  claims  to  individual  free- 
dom. 


ITALY  JOINS  THE  ALLIES 

THE  ITALIAN  "PEOPLE'S  WAR"  ON  AUSTRIA 

MAY   23RD 

EMPEROR  FRANZ  JOSEF  VON  BETHMANN-HOLLWEG 

ANTONIO    SALANDRA 

Few  events  of  history  have  been  viewed  from  such  widely  dif- 
fering standpoints  as  the  entry  of  Italy  into  the  Great  War.  We 
give  here  first  the  view  of  the  aged  Austrian  Emperor,  Franz  Josef, 
as  expressed  in  his  official  proclamation.  This  is  presumably  the  last 
document  of  the  Middle  Ages  that  will  ever  appear  in  the  world,  and 
as  such  it  is  worth  preserving.  Quaintly  medieval  indeed  is  its  atti- 
tude and  phrasing.  This  war  of  all  the  universe  is  made  a  private 
matter.  "The  King  of  Italy,"  says  Franz  Josef,  "has  declared  war  on 
me."  Did  this  still  clear-minded  old  aristocrat  of  eighty-seven  years 
actually  regard  the  contest  in  this  light,  as  a  personal  clash  between 
himself  and  the  Italian  monarch?  As  such,  it  would  have  been  hopeless 
indeed  for  him.  Or  is  the  Austrian's  whole  attitude  as  false  as  the 
boasts  of  victory  by  which  he  seeks  to  encourage  his  already  despondent 
armies  and  ignore  his  placing  of  German  generals  in  control? 

We  give  also  the  official  German  attitude  toward  Italy  as  expressed 
by  the  Imperial  Chancellor  in  his  speech  to  his  parliament  announcing 
the  new  war.  This  is  in  a  way  but  an  expansion  of  Franz  Josef's 
charge  that  Italy,  beloved  and  even  pampered  by  the  two  Teuton 
empires,  had  broken  faith  with  them,  had  treacherously  betrayed  and 
deserted  their  alliance. 

Let  the  historian,  once  more,  for  the  sake  of  saving  future  genera- 
tions from  the  deliberately  created  confusion  of  the  War,  speak 
here  with  clearest  definiteness.  For  any  such  charge  against  Italy 
there  is  absolutely  no  ground  whatever.  No  Teuton  leader  of  the 
inner  circle  believed,  or  could  possibly  have  believed,  this  charge 
when  it  was  made.  No  one  who  had  read  the  public  records  could 
have  believed  it.  It  was  an  absolutely  mendacious  charge  made  by 
the  Teuton  Governments  for  the  purpose  of  inflaming  the  passions 
and  blinding  the  judgment  of  their  ignorant  subjects — and  perchance 
of  ignorant  neutrals. 

There  was.  however,  a  charge  against  the  Italian  Government,  less 
absurd  than  this  flat  falsehood,  a  charge  seriously  considered  in  many 
neutral  lands.  This  was  that  Italy  had  entered  the  War  merely  as 
a  move  in  the  old-style  game  of  statecraft,  merely  as  a  business  ven- 
ture in  which  she  hoped  to  win  a  valuable  increase  of  territory.  This 
charge  may  now  be  dismissed  almost  as  completely  as  the  other.  In 
briefest  form,  the  facts  of  Italy's  relations  with  the  Teuton  empires 
were  as  follows : 

Italy  had  by  repeated  warfare  up  to  1866  won  her  own  freedom 

214 


ITALY  JOINS  THE  ALLIES  215 

from  the  tyranny  of  Austrian  rule.  But  the  Hapsburg  emperors  and 
their  almost  equally  guilty  Austrian  subjects  still  held  by  force  their 
lordship  over  the  Italian  peoples  of  Trieste  and  other  Alpine  and 
Adriatic  districts,  known  in  Italy  as  the  lands  "unredeemed."  While 
this  tyranny  still  continued  no  real  friendship  of  Italy  for  Austria 
was  possible ;  and  Italy  had  allied  herself  with  the  Teuton  empires 
only  on  the  practical  basis  of  necessity.  The  limits  of  that  alliance 
were  very  narrow,  and  there  was  never  the  slightest  obligation  on 
Italy  to  join  the  Teutons  in  the  War  in  1914,  or  the  slightest  possi- 
bility that  she  would.  There  was,  on  the  contrary,  every  probability 
of  her  seizing  any  opportunity  she  could  to  demand  from  Austria  the 
freedom  of  her  helpless  brothers. 

Recognizing  this,  Germany  from  the  beginning  of  the  War  main- 
tained in  Italy  a  propaganda  system  of  the  largest  kind.  Its  head  was 
Prince  von  Biilow,  the  former  Imperial  Chancellor.  He  expended  mil- 
lions of  money  in  Italy  in  whatever  secret  form  seemed  most  of  use 
for  Germany.  He  bought  newspapers  and  financed  politicians.  He 
even  negotiated  with  the  Italian  Government,  and  in  Austria's  name 
offered  to  yield  to  Italy  much  if  not  all  of  the  "unredeemed"  lands. 
The  only  question  was,  would  he  "deliver  the  goods."  Both  Austria 
and  Germany  insisted  that  the  lordship  of  the  territory  should  not  be 
transferred  until  "after  the  war."  The  Italians  put  no  faith  in  this 
Teuton  promise. 

There,  really,  is  why  Italy  entered  the  War.  She  had  grown  like 
all  the  rest  of  the  world  to  fear  Germany  and  to  distrust  her.  She 
believed  that  the  Teutons  if  victorious  would  reduce  her  again  to  her 
ancient  vassalage.  She  concluded,  just  as  America  came  afterward  to 
conclude,  that  she  must  either  fight  the  Teutons  at  once  with  the 
Allies'  aid,  or  be  left  to  fight  them  afterward  alone.  It  is  true  that 
before  declaring  war  she  made  with  the  Allies  secret  treaties  prom- 
ising her  all  and  rather  more  than  all  of  her  "unredeemed"  Austrian 
lands.  But  even  to  the  extremest  of  her  territorial  claims  there  was 
some  color  of  "national"  right  We  cannot  blame  her  for  seeing  that 
right  in  its  fullest  and  most  Italian  form. 

Signor  Salandra,  in  the  official  address  given  herewith  in  which  he 
explains  his  country's  action,  takes  for  granted  that  the  preceding 
facts  are  known.  To  the  Italian  public  of  1915  they  were  of  course 
fully  known.  Indeed,  the  Italian  Government  was  to  a  considerable 
extent  carried  perforce  into  the  War  by  the  vehement  popular  demand. 
The  Italian  masses  had  weighed  the  need  of  war  and  were  every- 
where clamorously  urging  it.  The  Government  ministry  which  had 
held  off  from  war  was  overwhelmingly  swept  aside.  The  old  Aus- 
trian Emperor  was  indeed  as  wrong  in  that  as  in  most  other  things 
when  he  referred  to  the  war  as  coming  from  the  Italian  King.  The 
Italian  Democracy  was  for  the  moment  fiercely  awake ;  and  this  was 
for  Italy  a  "people's  war." 

C.    F.    H. 


216  ITALY  JOINS  THE  ALLIES 

BY  EMPEROR  FRANZ  JOSEF 
Official  Austrian    Proclamation  of   War 

THE  King  of  Italy  has  declared  war  on  me.  Perfidy 
whose  like  history  does  not  know  was  committed  by  the 
Kingdom  of  Italy  against  both  allies.  After  an  alliance  of 
more  than  thirty  years'  duration,  during  which  it  was  able 
to  increase  its  territorial  possessions  and  develop  itself  to  an 
unthought  of  flourishing  condition,  Italy  abandoned  us  in 
our  hour  of  danger  and  went  over  with  flying  colors  into  the 
camp  of  our  enemies. 

We  did  not  menace  Italy;  did  not  curtail  her  authority; 
did  not  attack  her  honor  or  interests.  We  always  responded 
loyally  to  the  duties  of  our  alliance  and  afforded  her  our 
protection  when  she  took  the  field.  We  have  done  more. 
When  Italy  directed  covetous  glances  across  our  frontier 
we,  in  order  to  maintain  peace  and  our  alliance  relation, 
were  resolved  on  great  and  painful  sacrifices  which  particu- 
larly grieved  our  paternal  heart.  But  the  covetousness  of 
Italy,  which  believed  the  moment  should  be  used,  was  not 
to  be  appeased,  so  fate  must  be  accommodated. 

My  armies  have  victoriously  withstood  mighty  armies  in 
the  north  in  ten  months  of  this  gigantic  conflict  in  most  loyal 
comradeship  of  arms  with  our  illustrious  ally.  A  new  and 
treacherous  enemy  in  the  south  is  to  you  no  new  enemy. 
Great  memories  of  Novara,  Mortaro,  and  Lissa,  which  con- 
stituted the  pride  of  my  youth ;  the  spirit  of  Radetzky,  Arch- 
duke Albrecht,  and  Tegetthoff,  which  continues  to  live  in  my 
land  and  sea  forces,  guarantee  that  in  the  south  also  we 
shall  successfully  defend  the  frontiers  of  the  monarchy. 

I  salute  my  battle-tried  troops,  who  are  inured  to  victory. 
I  rely  on  them  and  their  leaders.  I  rely  on  my  people  for 
whose  unexampled  spirit  of  sacrifice  my  most  paternal  thanks 
are  due.  I  pray  the  Almighty  to  bless  our  colors  and  take 
under  His  gracious  protection  our  just  cause. 

BY  VON  BETHMANN-HOLLWEG 

When  I  last  spoke  there  was  still  a  glimpse  of  hope  that 
Italy's  participation  in  the  war  could  be  avoided.    That  hope 


ITALY  JOINS  THE  ALLIES  217 

proved  fallacious.  German  feeling  strove  against  the  belief 
in  the  possibility  of  such  a  change.  Italy  has  now  inscribed 
in  the  book  of  the  world's  history,  in  letters  of  blood  which 
will  never  fade,  her  violation  of  faith. 

I  believe  Macchiavelli  once  said  that  a  war  which  is 
necessary  is  also  just.  Viewed  from  this  sober,  practical, 
political  standpoint,  which  leaves  out  of  account  all  moral 
considerations,  has  this  war  been  necessary?  Is  it  not,  in- 
deed, directly  mad  ?  Nobody  threatened  Italy ;  neither  Aus- 
tria-Hungary nor  Germany.  Whether  the  Triple  Entente 
was  content  with  blandishments  alone  history  will  show 
later.  Without  a  drop  of  blood  flowing,  and  without  the 
life  of  a  single  Italian  being  endangered,  Italy  could  have 
secured  the  long  list  of  concessions  which  I  recently  read 
to  the  House — territory  in  Tyrol  and  on  the  Isonzo  as  far 
as  the  Italian  speech  is  heard,  satisfaction  of  the  national 
aspirations  in  Trieste,  a  free  hand  in  Albania,  and  the  valu- 
able port  of  Valona. 

Why  have  they  not  taken  it?  Do  they,  perhaps,  wish 
to  conquer  the  German  Tyrol  ?  Hands  off !  Did  Italy  wish 
to  provoke  Germany,  to  whom  she  owes  so  much  in  her 
upward  growth  of  a  great  power,  and  from  whom  she  is 
not  separated  by  any  conflict  of  interests?  We  left  Rome 
in  no  doubt  that  an  Italian  attack  on  Austro-Hungarian 
troops  would  also  strike  the  German  troops.  Why  did  Rome 
refuse  so  light-heartedly  the  proposals  of  Vienna?  The 
Italian  manifesto  of  war,  which  conceals  an  uneasy  con- 
science behind  vain  phrases,  does  not  give  us  any  explana- 
tion. They  were  too  shy,  perhaps,  to  say  openly  what  was 
spread  abroad  as  a  pretext  by  the  press  and  by  gossip  in  the 
lobbies  of  the  Chamber,  namely,  that  Austria's  offer  came 
too  late  and  could  not  be  trusted. 

What  are  the  facts?  Italian  statesmen  have  no  right 
to  measure  the  trustworthiness  of  other  nations  in  the  same 
proportion  as  they  measured  their  own  loyalty  to  a  treaty. 
Germany,  by  her  word,  guaranteed  that  the  concessions 
would  be  carried  through.  There  was  no  occasion  for  dis- 
trust. Why  too  late?  On  May  4th  the  Trentino  was  the 
same  territory  as  it  was  in  February,  and  a  whole  series  of 


218  ITALY  JOINS  THE  ALLIES 

concessions  had  been  added  to  the  Trentino  of  which  no- 
body had  thought  in  the  winter. 

It  was,  perhaps,  too  late  for  this  reason,  that  while  the 
Triple  Alliance,  the  existence  of  which  the  King  and  the 
Government  had  expressly  acknowledged  after  the  outbreak 
of  war,  was  still  alive,  Italian  statesmen  had  long  before 
engaged  themselves  so  deeply  with  the  Triple  Entente  that 
they  could  not  disentangle  themselves.  There  were  indica- 
tions of  fluctuations  in  the  Rome  Cabinet  as  far  back  as  De- 
cember. To  have  two  irons  in  the  fire  is  always  useful. 
Before  this  Italy  had  shown  her  predilection  for  extra  dances. 
But  this  is  no  ballroom.  This  is  a  bloody  battlefield  upon 
which  Germany  and  Austria-Hungary  are  fighting  for  their 
lives  against  a  world  of  enemies.  The  statesmen  of  Rome 
have  played  against  their  own  people  the  same  game  as  they 
played  against  us. 

It  is  true  that  the  Italian-speaking  territory  on  the  north- 
ern frontier  has  always  been  the  dream  and  the  desire  of 
every  Italian,  but  the  great  majority  of  the  Italian  people, 
as  well  as  the  majority  in  Parliament,  did  not  want  to  know 
anything  of  war.  According  to  the  observation  of  the  best 
judge  of  the  situation  in  Italy,  in  the  first  days  of  May 
4th-5th  of  the  Senate  and  two-thirds  of  the  Chamber  were 
against  war,  and  in  that  majority  were  the  most  responsible 
and  important  statesmen.  But  common  sense  had  no  say. 
The  mob  alone  ruled.  Under  the  kindly  disposed  toleration 
and  with  the  assistance  of  the  leading  statesmen  of  a  Cabinet 
fed  with  the  gold  of  the  Triple  Entente,  the  mob,  under  the 
guidance  of  unscrupulous  war  instigators,  was  roused  to  a 
frenzy  of  blood  which  threatened  the  King  with  revolution 
and  all  moderate  men  with  murder  if  they  did  not  join  in 
the  war  delirium. 

The  Italian  people  were  intentionally  kept  in  the  dark  with 
regard  to  the  course  of  the  Austrian  negotiations  and  the 
extent  of  the  Austrian  concessions,  and  so  it  came  about  that 
after  the  resignation  of  the  Salandra  Cabinet  nobody  could 
be  found  who  had  the  courage  to  undertake  the  formation 
of  a  new  Cabinet,  and  that  in  the  decisive  debate  no  member 
of  the  Constitutional  Party  in  the  Senate  or  Chamber  even 


ITALY  JOINS  THE  ALLIES  219 

attempted  to  estimate  the  value  of  the  far-reaching  Austrian 
concessions.  In  the  frenzy  of  war  honest  politicians  grew 
dumb,  but  when,  as  the  result  of  military  events  (as  we 
hope  and  desire),  the  Italian  people  become  sober  again  it 
will  recognize  how  frivolously  it  was  instigated  to  take  part 
in  this  world  war. 

We  did  everything  possible  to  avoid  the  alienation  of 
Italy  from  the  Triple  Alliance.  The  ungrateful  role  fell 
to  us  of  requiring  from  our  loyal  ally,  Austria,  with  whose 
armies  our  troops  share  daily  wounds,  death,  and  victory, 
the  purchase  of  the  loyalty  of  the  third  party  to  the  alliance 
by  the  cession  of  old-inherited  territory.  That  Austria-Hun- 
gary went  to  the  utmost  limit  possible  is  known.  Prince 
von  Biilow,  who  again  entered  into  the  active  service  of  the 
empire,  tried  by  every  means,  his  diplomatic  ability,  his 
most  thorough  knowledge  of  the  Italian  situation  and  of  Ital- 
ic. 1  personages,  to  come  to  an  understanding.  Though  his 
work  has  been  in  vain,  the  entire  people  are  grateful  to  him. 
Also  this  storm  we  shall  endure.  From  month  to  month 
we  grow  more  intimate  with  our  ally.  From  the  Pilitza  to 
the  Bukowina  we  tenaciously  withstood  with  our  Austro- 
Hungarian  comrades  for  months  the  gigantic  superiority  of 
the  enemy.    Then  we  victoriously  advanced. 

So  our  new  enemies  will  perish  through  the  spirit  of 
loyalty  and  the  friendship  and  bravery  of  the  central  powers. 
In  this  war  Turkey  is  celebrating  a  brilliant  regeneration. 
The  whole  German  people  follow  with  enthusiasm  the  dif- 
ferent phases  of  the  obstinate,  victorious  resistance  with 
which  the  loyal  Turkish  Army  and  fleet  repulse  the  attacks 
of  their  enemies  with  heavy  blows.  Against  the  living  wall 
of  our  warriors  in  the  west  our  enemies  up  till  now  have 
vainly  stormed.  If  in  some  places  fighting  fluctuates,  if 
here  or  there  a  trench  or  a  village  is  lost  or  won,  the  great 
attempt  of  our  adversaries  to  break  through,  which  they 
announced  five  months  ago,  did  not  succeed,  and  will  not 
succeed.  They  will  perish  through  the  heroic  bravery  of 
our  soldiers. 

Up  till  now  our  enemies  have  summoned  in  vain  against 
us  all  the  forces  of  the  world  and  a  gigantic  coalition  of 


220  ITALY  JOINS  THE  ALLIES 

brave  soldiers.  We  will  not  despise  our  enemies,  as  our 
adversaries  like  to  do.  At  the  moment  when  the  mob  in 
English  towns  is  dancing  around  the  stake  at  which  the 
property  of  defenseless  Germans  is  burning,  the  English 
Government  dared  to  publish  a  document,  with  the  evidence 
of  unarmed  witnesses,  on  the  alleged  cruelties  in  Belgium, 
which  are  of  so  monstrous  a  character  that  only  mad  brains 
could  believe  them.  But  while  the  English  press  does  not 
permit  itself  to  be  deprived  of  news,  the  terror  of  the  censor- 
ship reigns  in  Paris.  No  casualty  lists  appear,  and  no  Ger- 
man or  Austrian  communiques  may  be  printed.  Severely 
wounded  invalids  are  kept  away  from  their  relations,  and 
real  fear  of  the  truth  appears  to  be  the  motive  of  the  Gov- 
ernment. 

Thus  it  comes  about,  according  to  trustworthy  observa- 
tion, that  there  is  no  knowledge  of  the  heavy  defeats  which 
the  Russians  have  sustained,  and  the  belief  continues  in  the 
Russian  "steam-roller"  advancing  on  Berlin,  which  is 
"perishing  from  starvation  and  misery,"  and  confidence  ex- 
ists in  the  great  offensive  in  the  west,  which  for  months  has 
not  progressed.  If  the  Governments  of  hostile  States  believe 
that  by  the  deception  of  the  people  and  by  unchaining  blind 
hatred  they  can  shift  the  blame  for  the  crime  of  this  war 
-  nd  postpone  the  day  of  awakening,  we,  relying  on  our  good 
onscience,  a  just  cause,  and  a  victorious  sword,  will  not 
allow  ourselves  to  be  forced  by  a  hair's  breadth  from  the 
path  which  we  have  always  recognized  as  right.  Amid  this 
confusion  of  minds  on  the  other  side,  the  German  people 
goes  on  its  own  way,  calm  and  sure. 

Not  in  hatred  do  we  wage  this  war,  but  in  anger — in  holy 
anger.  The  greater  the  danger  we  have  to  confront,  sur- 
rounded on  all  sides  by  enemies,  the  more  deeply  does  the 
love  of  home  grip  our  hearts,  the  more  must  we  care  for  our 
children  and  grandchildren,  and  the  more  must  we  endure 
until  we  have  conquered  and  have  secured  every  possible  real 
guarantee  and  assurance  that  no  enemy  alone  or  combined 
will  dare  again  a  trial  of  arms.  The  more  wildly  the  storm 
rages  around  us  the  more  firmly  must  we  build  our  own 
house.    For  this  consciousness  of  united  strength,  unshaken 


ITALY  JOINS  THE  ALLIES  221 

courage,  and  boundless  devotion,  which  inspire  the  whole 
people,  and  for  the  loyal  cooperation  which  you,  gentlemen, 
from  the  first  day  have  given  to  the  Fatherland,  I  bring  you, 
as  the  representatives  of  the  entire  people,  the  warm  thanks 
of  the  Emperor. 

BY  SIGNOR  SALANDRA 

I  address  myself  to  Italy  and  to  the  civilized  world  in 
order  to  show  not  by  violent  words,  but  by  exact  facts  and 
documents,  how  the  fury  of  our  enemies  has  vainly  attempted 
to  diminish  the  high  moral  and  political  dignity  of  the  cause 
which  our  arms  will  make  prevail.  I  shall  speak  with  the 
calm  of  which  the  King  of  Italy  has  given  a  noble  example, 
when  he  called  his  land  and  sea  forces  to  arms.  I  shall  speak 
with  the  respect  due  to  my  position  and  to  the  place  in 
which  I  speak.  I  can  afford  to  ignore  the  insults  written  in 
Imperial,  Royal,  and  Archducal  proclamations.  Since  I  speak 
from  the  Capitol,  and  represent  in  this  solemn  hour  the 
people  and  the  Government  of  Italy,  I,  a  modest  citizen, 
feel  that  I  am  far  nobler  than  the  head  of  the  house  of  the 
Hapsburgs. 

The  commonplace  statesmen  who,  in  rash  frivolity  of 
mind  and  mistaken  in  all  their  calculations,  set  fire  last  July 
to  the  whole  of  Europe  and  even  to  their  own  hearths  and 
homes,  have  now  noticed  their  fresh  colossal  mistake,  and 
in  the  Parliaments  of  Budapest  and  Berlin  have  poured 
forth  brutal  invective  of  Italy  and  her  Government  with  the 
obvious  design  of  securing  the  forgiveness  of  their  fellow- 
citizens  and  intoxicating  them  with  cruel  visions  of  hatred 
and  blood.  The  German  Chancellor  said  he  was  imbued 
not  with  hatred,  but  with  anger,  and  he  spoke  the  truth,  be- 
cause he  reasoned  badly,  as  is  usually  the  case  in  fits  of  rage. 
I  could  not,  even  if  I  chose,  imitate  their  language.  An 
atavistic  throwback  to  primitive  barbarism  is  more  difficult 
for  us  who  have  twenty  centuries  behind  us  more  than  they 
have. 

The  fundamental  thesis  of  the  statesmen  of  Central  Eu- 
rope is  to  be  found  in  the  words  "treason  and  surprise  on 
the  part  of  Italy  toward  her  faithful  allies."     It  would  be 


222  ITALY  JOINS  THE  ALLIES 

easy  to  ask  if  he  has  any  right  to  speak  of  alliance  and  respect 
for  treaties  who,  representing  with  infinitely  less  genius,  but 
with  equal  moral  indifference,  the  tradition  of  Frederick  the 
Great  and  Bismarck  proclaimed  that  necessity  knows  no 
law,  and  consented  to  his  country  trampling  under  foot  and 
burying  at  the  bottom  of  the  ocean  all  the  documents  and  all 
the  customs  of  civilization  and  international  law.  But  that 
would  be  too  easy  an  argument.  Let  us  examine,  on  the  con- 
trary, positively  and  calmly,  if  our  former  allies  are  entitled 
to  say  that  they  wrere  betrayed  and  surprised  by  us. 

Our  aspirations  had  long  been  known,  as  was  also  our 
judgment  on  the  act  of  criminal  madness  by  which  they 
shook  the  world  and  robbed  the  alliance  itself  of  its  closest 
raison  d'etre.  The  "Green  Book"  prepared  by  Baron  Son- 
nino,  with  whom  it  is  the  pride  of  my  life  to  stand  united  in 
entire  harmony  in  this  solemn  hour  after  thirty  years  of 
friendship,  shows  the  long,  difficult,  and  useless  negotiations 
that  took  place  between  December  and  May.  But  it  is  not 
true,  as  has  been  asserted  without  a  shadow  of  foundation, 
that  the  Ministry  reconstituted  last  November  made  a  change 
in  the  direction  of  our  international  policy.  The  Italian  Gov- 
ernment, whose  policy  has  never  changed,  severely  con- 
demned, at  the  very  moment  when  it  learned  of  it,  the  ag- 
gression of  Austria  against  Serbia,  and  foresaw  the  conse- 
quences of  that  aggression,  consequences  which  had  not  been 
foreseen  by  those  who  had  -  .^meditated  the  stroke  with  such 
lack  of  conscience. 

In  effect,  Austria,  in  consequence  of  the  terms  in  which 
her  note  was  couched,  and  in  consequence  of  the  things  de- 
manded, which,  while  of  little  effect  against  the  Pan-Serbian 
danger,  were  profoundly  offensive  to  Serbia,  and  indirectly 
so  to  Russia,  had  clearly  shown  that  she  wished  to  provoke 
war.  Hence  we  declared  to  von  Flotow  that,  in  consequence 
of  this  procedure  on  the  part  of  Austria  and  in  consequence 
of  the  defensive  and  conservative  character  of  the  Triple 
Alliance  Treaty,  Italy  was  under  no  obligation  to  assist 
Austria  if,  as  the  result  of  this  demarche,  she  found  herself 
at  war  with  Russia,  because  any  European  war  would  in 


ITALY  JOINS  THE  ALLIES  223 

such  an  event  be  the  consequence  of  the  act  of  provocation 
and  aggression  committed  by  Austria. 

The  Italian  Government  on  July  27th  and  28th  em- 
phasized in  clear  and  unmistakable  language  to  Berlin  and 
Vienna  the  question  of  the  cession  of  the  Italian  provinces 
subject  to  Austria,  and  we  declared  that  if  we  did  not  ob- 
tain adequate  compensation  the  Triple  Alliance  would  have 
been  irreparably  broken.  Impartial  history  will  say  that 
Austria,  having  found  Italy  in  July,  191 3,  and  in  October, 
1 91 3,  hostile  to  her  intentions  of  aggression  against  Serbia, 
attempted  last  summer,  in  agreement  with  Germany,  the 
method  of  surprise  and  the  fait  accompli. 

The  horrible  crime  of  Serajevo  was  exploited  as  a  pre- 
text a  month  after  it  happened — this  was  proved  by  the 
refusal  of  Austria  to  accept  the  very  extensive  offers  of 
Serbia — nor  at  the  moment  of  the  general  conflagration 
would  Austria  have  been  satisfied  with  tlu  unconditional  ac- 
ceptance of  the  ultimatum.  Count  Berchtold  on  July  31st 
declared  to  the  Duke  of  Avarna  that,  if  there  had  been  a 
possibility  of  mediation  being  exercised,  it  could  not  have 
interrupted  hostilities,  which  had  already  begun  with  Serbia. 
This  was  the  mediation  for  which  Great  Britain  and  Italy 
were  working.  In  any  case,  Count  Berchtold  was  not  dis- 
posed to  accept  mediation  tending  to  weaken  the  conditions 
indicated  in  the  Austrian  note,  which,  naturally,  would  have 
been  increased  at  the  end  of  the  war. 

If,  moreover,  Serbia  had  decided  meanwhile  to  accept 
the  aforementioned  note  in  its  entirety,  declaring  herself 
ready  to  agree  to  the  conditions  imposed  on  her,  that  would 
not  have  persuaded  Austria  to  cease  hostilities.  It  is  not  true, 
as  Count  Tisza  declared,  that  Austria  did  not  undertake 
to  make  territorial  acquisitions  to  the  detriment  of  Serbia, 
who,  moreover,  by  accepting  all  the  conditions  imposed  upon 
her,  would  have  become  a  subject  State.  The  Austrian  Am- 
bassador, Herr  Merey  von  Kapos-Mere,  on  July  30th,  stated 
to  the  Marquis  di  San  Giuliano  that  Austria  could  not  make 
a  binding  declaration  on  this  subject,  because  she  could  not 
foresee  whether,  during  the  war,  she  might  not  be  obliged, 
against  her.  will,  to  keep  Serbian  territory. 


224  ITALY  JOINS  THE  ALLIES 

On  July  29th  Count  Berchtold  stated  to  the  Duke  of 
Avarna  that  he  was  not  inclined  to  enter  into  any  engage- 
ment concerning  the  eventual  conduct  of  Austria  in  the  case 
of  a  conflict  with  Serbia. 

Where  is,  then,  the  treason,  the  iniquity,  the  surprise,  if, 
after  nine  months  of  vain  efforts  to  reach  an  honorable  un- 
derstanding which  recognized  in  equitable  measure  our  rights 
and  our  liberties,  we  resumed  liberty  of  action?  The  truth 
is  that  Austria  and  Germany  believed  until  the  last  days 
that  they  had  to  deal  with  an  Italy  weak,  blustering,  but  not 
acting,  capable  of  trying  blackmail,  but  not  enforcing  by 
arms  her  good  right,  with  an  Italy  which  could  be  paralyzed 
by  spending  a  few  millions,  and  which  by  dealings  which 
she  could  not  avow  was  placing  herself  between  the  coun- 
try and  the  Government. 

I  will  not  deny  the  benefits  of  the  alliance ;  benefits,  how- 
ever, not  one-sided,  but  accruing  to  all  the  contracting  par- 
ties, and  perhaps  not  more  to  us  than  to  the  others.  The 
continued  suspicions  and  the  aggressive  intentions  of  Aus- 
tria against  Italy  are  notorious  and  are  authentically  proved. 
The  Chief  of  the  General  Staff,  Baron  Conrad  von  Hoetz- 
endorf,  always  maintained  that  war  against  Italy  was  in- 
evitable, either  on  the  question  of  the  irredentist  provinces 
or  from  jealousy,  that  Italy  intended  to  aggrandize  herself 
as  soon  as  she  was  prepared,  and  meanwhile  opposed  every- 
thing that  Austria  wished  to  undertake  in  the  Balkans, 
and  consequently  it  was  necessary  to  humiliate  her  in  order 
that  Austria  might  have  her  hands  free,  and  he  deplored  that 
Italy  had  not  been  attacked  in  1907.  Even  the  Austrian 
Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  recognized  that  in  the  military 
party  the  opinion  was  prevalent  that  Italy  must  be  sup- 
pressed by  war  because  from  the  Kingdom  of  Italy  came  the 
attractive  force  of  the  Italian  provinces  of  the  empire,  and 
consequently  by  a  victory  over  the  kingdom  and  its  political 
annihilation  all  hope  for  the  irredentists  would  cease. 

We  see  now  on  the  basis  of  documents  how  our  allies 
aided  us  in  the  Lybian  undertaking.  The  operations  bril- 
liantly begun  by  the  Duke  of  the  Abruzzi  against  the  Turkish 
torpedo  boats  encountered  at  Preveza  were  stopped  by  Aus- 


ITALY  JOINS  THE  ALLIES  225 

tria  in  a  sudden  and  absolute  manner.  Count  Aehrenthal 
on  October  1st  informed  our  Ambassador  at  Vienna  that 
our  operations  had  made  a  painful  impression  upon  him 
and  that  he  could  not  allow  them  to  be  continued.  It  was 
urgently  necessary,  he  said,  to  put  an  end  to  them  and  to  give 
orders  to  prevent  them  from  being  renewed,  either  in  Adri- 
atic or  in  Ionian  waters.  The  following  day  the  German 
Ambassador  at  Vienna,  in  a  still  more  threatening  manner, 
confidentially  informed  our  Ambassador  that  Count  Aehren- 
thal had  requested  him  to  telegraph  to  his  Government  to 
give  the  Italian  Government  to  understand  that  if  it  con- 
tinued its  naval  operations  in  the  Adriatic  and  in  the  Ionian 
Seas  it  would  have  to  deal  directly  with  Austria-Hungary. 

And  it  was  not  only  in  the  Adriatic  and  in  the  Ionian 
Seas  that  Austria  paralyzed  our  actions.  On  November  5th 
Count  Aehrenthal  informed  the  Duke  of  Avarna  that  he 
had  learned  that  Italian  warships  had  been  reported  o#  Sa- 
lonika, where  they  had  used  electric  searchlights — and  de- 
clared that  our  action  on  the  Ottoman  coasts  of  European 
Turkey,  as  well  as  on  the  ^Egean  Islands,  could  not  have  been 
allowed  either  by  Austria-Hungary  or  by  Germany,  because 
it  was  contrary  to  the  Triple  Alliance  Treaty. 

In  March,  1912,  Count  Berchtold,  who  had  in  the  mean- 
time succeeded  Count  Aehrenthal,  declared  to  the  German 
Ambassador  in  Vienna  that,  in  regard  to  our  operations 
against  the  coasts  of  European  Turkey  and  the  yEgean 
Islands,  he  adhered  to  the  point  of  view  of  Count  Aehrenthal, 
according  to  which  these  operations  were  considered  by  the 
Austro-Hungarian  Government  contrary  to  the  engagement 
entered  into  by  us  by  Article  VII.  of  the  Triple  Alliance 
Treaty.  As  for  our  operations  against  the  Dardanelles,  he 
considered  it  opposed,  first,  to  the  promise  made  by  us  not  to 
proceed  to  any  act  which  might  endanger  the  status  quo  in 
the  Balkans,  and,  secondly,  to  the  spirit  of  the  same  treaty, 
which  was  based  on  the  maintenance  of  the  status  quo. 

Afterward,  when  our  squadron  at  the  entrance  to  the 
Dardanelles  was  bombarded  by  Fort  Kumkalessi  and  replied, 
damaging  that  fort,  Count  Berchtold  complained  of  what 
had  happened,  considering  it  contrary  to  the  promises  we 

w.,  VOL.  III.— 15. 


226  ITALY  JOINS  THE  ALLIES 

had  made,  and  declared  that  if  the  Italian  Government  de- 
sired to  resume  its  liberty  of  action,  the  Austro-Hungarian 
Government  could  have  done  the  same.  He  added  that  he 
could  not  have  allowed  us  to  undertake  in  the  future  similar 
operations  or  operations  in  any  way  opposed  to  this  point 
of  view.  In  the  same  way  our  projected  occupation  of  Chios 
was  prevented.  It  is  superfluous  to  remark  how  many  lives 
of  Italian  soldiers  and  how  many  millions  were  sacrificed 
through  the  persistent  vetoing  of  our  actions  against  Turkey, 
who  knew  that  she  was  protected  by  our  allies  against  all 
attacks  on  her  vital  parts. 

We  were  bitterly  reproached  for  not  having  accepted  the 
offers  made  toward  the  end  of  May,  but  were  these  offers 
made  in  good  faith?  Certain  documents  indicate  that  they 
were  not.  Franz  Josef  said  that  Italy  was  regarding  the 
patrimony  of  his  house  with  greedy  eyes.  Herr  von  Beth- 
mann-Hollweg  said  that  the  aim  of  these  concessions  was 
to  purchase  our  neutrality,  and,  therefore,  gentlemen,  you 
may  applaud  us  for  not  having  accepted  them.  Moreover, 
these  concessions,  even  in  their  last  and  belated  edition,  in 
no  way  responded  to  the  objectives  of  Italian  policy,  which 
are,  first,  the  defense  of  Italianism,  the  greatest  of  our  duties ; 
secondly,  a  secure  military  frontier,  replacing  that  which 
was  imposed  upon  us  in  1866,  by  which  all  the  gates  of  Italy 
are  open  to  our  adversaries;  thirdly,  a  strategical  situation 
in  the  Adriatic  less  dangerous  and  unfortunate  than  that 
which  we  have,  and  of  which  you  have  seen  the  effects  in  the 
last  few  days.  All  these  essential  advantages  were  sub- 
stantially denied  us. 

To  our  minimum  demand  for  the  granting  of  inde- 
pendence to  Trieste  the  reply  was  to  offer  Trieste  adminis- 
trative autonomy.  Also  the  question  of  fulfilling  the  prom- 
ises was  very  important.  We  were  told  not  to  doubt  that 
they  would  be  fulfilled,  because  we  should  have  Germany's 
guarantee,  but  if  at  the  end  of  the  war  Germany  had  not 
been  able  to  keep  it,  what  would  our  position  have  been? 
And  in  any  case,  after  this  agreement,  the  Triple  Alliance 
would  have  been  renewed,  but  in  much  less  favorable  con- 


ITALY  JOINS  THE  ALLIES  227 

ditions,  for  there  would  have  been  one  sovereign  State  and 
two  subject  States. 

On  the  day  when  one  of  the  clauses  of  the  treaty  was 
not  fulfilled,  or  on  the  day  when  the  municipal  autonomy  of 
Trieste  was  violated  by  an  imperial  decree  or  by  a  lieu- 
tenant's orders,  to  whom  should  we  have  addressed  our- 
selves? To  our  common  superior — to  Germany?  I  do  not 
wish  to  speak  of  Germany  to  you  without  admiration  and 
respect.  I  am  the  Italian  Prime  Minister,  not  the  German 
Chancellor,  and  I  do  not  lose  my  head.  But  with  all  respect 
for  the  learned,  powerful,  and  great  Germany,  an  admirable 
example  of  organization  and  resistance,  in  the  name  of 
Italy  I  declare  for  no  subjection  and  no  protectorate  over 
any  one.  The  dream  of  a  universal  hegemony  is  shattered. 
The  world  has  risen.  The  peace  and  civilization  of  future 
humanity  must  be  founded  on  respect  for  existing  national 
autonomies.  Among  these  Germany  will  have  to  sit  as  an 
equal,  and  not  as  a  master. 

But  a  more  remarkable  example  of  the  unmeasured  pride 
with  which  the  directors  of  German  policy  regard  other  na- 
tions is  given  in  the  picture  which  Herr  von  Bethmann- 
Hollweg  drew  of  the  Italian  political  world. 

I  do  not  know  if  it  was  the  intention  of  this  man,  blinded 
by  rage,  personally  to  insult  my  colleagues  and  me.  If  that 
was  the  case,  I  should  not  mention  it.  We  are  men  whose 
life  you  know,  men  who  have  served  the  State  to  an  advanced 
age,  men  of  spotless  renown,  men  who  have  given  the  lives 
of  their  children  for  their  country. 

The  information  on  which  this  judgment  was  based  is 
attributed  by  the  German  Chancellor  to  him  whom  he  calls 
the  best  judge  of  Italian  affairs.  Perhaps  he  alludes  io 
Prince  von  Biilow,  with  the  brotherly  desire  to  shoulder 
responsibilities  upon  him.  Now,  I  do  not  wish  you  to  en- 
tertain an  erroneous  idea  of  Prince  von  Billow's  intentions. 
I  believe  that  he  had  sympathies  for  Italy,  and  did  all  he 
could  to  bring  about  an  agreement.  But  how  great  and 
how  numerous  were  the  mistakes  he  made  in  translating  his 
good  intentions  into  action!  He  thought  that  Italy  could 
be  diverted  from  her  path  by  a  few  millions  ill-spent  and 


228  ITALY  JOINS  THE  ALLIES 

by  the  influence  of  a  few  persons  who  have  lost  touch  with 
the  soul  of  the  nation — by  contact,  attempted,  but,  I  hope, 
not  accomplished,  with  certain  politicians. 

The  effect  was  the  contrary.  An  immense  outburst  of 
indignation  was  kindled  throughout  Italy,  and  not  among 
the  populace,  but  among  the  noblest  and  most  educated 
classes  and  among  all  the  youth  of  the  country,  which  is 
ready  to  shed  its  blood  for  the  nation.  This  outburst  of 
indignation  was  kindled  as  the  result  of  the  suspicion  that  a 
foreign  Ambassador  was  interfering  between  the  Italian 
Government,  the  Parliament,  and  the  country.  In  the  blaze 
thus  kindled  internal  discussions  melted  away,  and  the  whole 
nation  was  joined  in  a  wonderful  moral  union,  which  will 
prove  our  greatest  source  of  strength  in  the  severe  struggle 
which  faces  us,  and  which  must  lead  us  by  our  own  virtue, 
and  not  by  benevolent  concessions  from  others,  to  the  ac- 
complishment of  the  highest  destinies  of  the  country. 


THE   FALL  OF   WARSAW 

RUSSIA  LOSES  ITS  WHOLE  OUTER  LINE  OF  DEFENSE 

AUGUST    4TH 

GENERAL  VON  DER  BOECK       MARGARETE  MUNSTERBERG 
PRINCESS  CATHARINE  RADZIWILL 

When  the  Von  Mackensen  battering  ram  had  driven  the  Russians 
out  of  Galicia,  General  Von  Hindenburg,  the  German  commander-in- 
chief  in  the  East,  resolved  to  carry  this  victory  to  a  yet  larger  success. 
He  hoped  to  break  the  Russian  power  completely.  For  this  purpose 
he  launched  his  own  forces  from  Prussia  southward  into  Poland; 
while  Mackensen  attacked  it  from  Galicia,  marching  north.  Between 
them    they   hoped    to   entrap    in   Warsaw   the   main   Russian    armies. 

The  chief  defenses  of  the  Russians  were  a  series  of  strong  fortress 
cities.  The  main  ones,  naming  them  from  north  to  south,  were 
Riga  on  the  Baltic  coast,  Kovno  and  Grodno  on  the  Niemen  River, 
which  in  part  separates  Russia  and  East  Prussia,  Ossowiec  and  Lomza 
defending  Poland  from  East  Prussia,  Novo  Georgiewsk  directly  in 
front  of  Warsaw  and  guarding  the  junction  of  the  two  great  Polish 
rivers,  the  Vistula  and  the  Bug.  Further  south  upon  the  Vistula  lies 
Ivangorod. 

The  fortresses  to  the  south  fell  first,  Ivangorod  and  then  Warsaw 
itself.  But  following  this  in  quick  succession  came  the  storming  of 
the  northern  strongholds.  Their  line  was  broken  first  at  Lomza,  then 
at  Kovno.  Kovno  was  chief  of  the  northern  bulwarks  of  Russia  ; 
and  the  German  reports  glowed  with  accounts  of  the  tremendous  bat- 
tle there.  Russia,  however,  regarded  the  Kovno  defense  as  so  feeble 
that  its  commander  was  accused  of  selling  out  to  the  enemy  and  was 
publicly  disgraced. 

Very  different  was  the  .gallant  defense  of  Ossowiec  and  Novo 
Georgiewsk.  Even  these  fell  at  last ;  but  their  resistance  gave  the 
Russian  armies  time  to  escape  the  enclosing  pincers  of  the  German 
generals.  The  Russians  fell  back  to  a  second  line  of  which  the  central 
defense  was  Brest-Litovsk,  on  the  truly  Russian  border  east  of  the 
Polish  capital,  Warsaw. 

But  Brest-Litovsk  was  also  doomed  to  fall.  Its  surrender  on 
August  26th  was  the  crown  of  Germany's  victory.  After  this  success 
the  noted  German  bulletin,  here  given,  was  issued,  boasting  that  Rus- 
sia's main  army  was  destroyed,  and  her  strength  was  broken.  General 
Boeck  here  outlines  for  us  the  course  of  German  victory  which  led 
to  Warsaw's  capture.  Miss  Margarete  Munsterberg  has  then  con- 
densed for  us  the  popular  Berlin  narratives  of  enthusiastic  victory, 
including  the  extravagant  official  bulletin.  Princess  Radziwill  gives  the 
Russian   view,   or   rather  the   Russian   court   view.     The  epic   of   the 

220 


230  THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW 

Russian  soldier  himself,  the  patient  courage  with  which  he  opposed 
the  tremendous  German  artillery,  the  loyalty  with  which  he  rushed 
into  hopeless  battle,  often  unarmed  and  never  fitly  protected  by  artil- 
lery, these  have  not  yet  found  a  voice.  Perhaps  they  never  can  find  a 
sufficient  one. 

BY  GENERAL  VON  DER  BOECK 

IN  order  to  understand  the  significant  events  of  the  last 
four  months  on  the  eastern  front,  it  will  be  necessary  to 
recall  briefly  the  military  situation  that  obtained  there  dur- 
ing the  winter  of  1914-15. 

As  a  result  of  the  battles  at  Lodz  and  at  Limanova  dur- 
ing November  and  December,  the  Russian  front  in  Poland 
and  in  Galicia  over  a  stretch  of  almost  400  kilometers  was 
compelled  to  retreat,  thus  shattering  the  Russian  plan  of  an 
offensive.  During  the  early  months  of  191 5,  the  Russians 
mobilized  their  great  numerical  superiority  in  the  hope  of 
smashing  through  the  Carpathians  into  Hungary  and  thus, 
if  possible,  of  coming  to  the  aid  of  the  Serbs;  this  plan, 
too,  miscarried. 

The  time  had  therefore  arrived  for  the  allied  Central 
Powers  to  launch  a  crushing  blow  at  their  mighty  eastern 
antagonist  by  a  combined  attack  of  their  victorious  troops. 
The  execution  of  this  ambitious  plan  had  been  prepared 
with  great  care  and  secrecy  by  the  German  and  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  chief  command,  so  that  the  Russians  were  taken 
quite  unawares  when,  during  the  early  days  of  May,  191 5, 
the  allied  Powers  inaugurated  a  successful  attack  against 
the  right  flank  and  the  rear  of  the  invader's  position  on  the 
Dunajec. 

Because  of  this  great  but  stubbornly  contested  victory  of 
the  Teuton  Powers  under  the  command  of  General  von 
Mackensen  (May  1st),  the  Russian  front  was  pushed  in 
many  places  from  its  position  near  the  Hungarian  border 
back  upon  the  confluence  of  the  Dunajec  and  the  Vistula. 
The  immediate  and  energetic  pursuit  of  the  eastward  retreat- 
ing enemy  placed  those  of  his  forces  still  in  the  Carpathians 
in  great  jeopardy.  It  is  easy  to  understand,  therefore,  that 
the  Russians  made  obstinate  attempts  to  check  the  further 
advance  of  the  allied   [Teuton]    Powers.     This  resistance 


THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW  231 

was  broken,  however,  in  the  battle  of  Tarnow-Gorlice  (May 
13th),  so  that  the  Russians  had  to  withdraw  their  right 
wing  beyond  the  San,  and  their  left  wing  to  the  vicinity  of 
the  fortress  of  Przemysl,  which  had  been  in  their  possession 
since  March  22nd;  to  Przemysl,  too,  they  withdrew  the 
troops  that  had  been  driven  in  the  meantime  from  the  west- 
ern ranges  of  the  Carpathians. 

After  a  short  breathing-spell  for  the  establishment  of 
communications  and  the  advance  of  the  rearguard,  the  al- 
lied Powers  renewed  the  pursuit.  While  the  army  of  Arch- 
duke Joseph  Ferdinand,  which  constituted  the  left  wing,  was 
pushing  its  way  over  the  San,  the  right  wing  of  Von  Macken- 
sen's  army  drove  the  enemy  from  the  vicinity  of  Przemysl, 
at  the  same  time  recapturing  the  fortress  (June  3rd).  The 
enemy  withdrew  his  right  wing  in  the  direction  of  Lublin, 
his  center  and  his  left  wing,  in  part  northeastward,  in  part 
eastward,  back  upon  Lemberg.  Thus  the  situation  offered  a 
division  of  the  Russian  forces,  and  bore  in  itself  the  germ 
of  the  defeat  of  the  Russians  in  Poland. 

As  a  matter  of  course,  the  events  in  West  Galicia  just 
recounted  did  not  remain  without  influence  on  the  situation 
along  the  west  bank  of  the  Vistula.  Here  the  Russians 
abandoned  the  positions  that  they  had  held  for  months  on 
the  Nida  between  the  Vistula  and  Pilica,  withdrawing  north- 
easterly toward  Radom.  The  Woyrsch  army-group  fol- 
lowed on  their  heels.  West  of  Warsaw,  however,  the  Rus- 
sians still  occupied  very  strong  positions. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Russian  retreat  had  an  ever  in- 
creasing effect  on  their  left  wing  in  the  eastern  Carpa- 
thians, especially  since  the  army  of  Von  Linsingen,  which 
faced  this  wing,  developed  considerable  activity,  with  the 
result  that  these  Russian  troops  were  driven  across  the 
upper  Dniester  (June  24th).  By  this  success,  the  army- 
group  under  Pflanzer-Baltin,  at  the  extreme  right  wing  of 
the  allied  Powers,  was  relieved  of  the  pressure  of  continual 
attacks  by  strong  Russian  forces. 

After  the  ejection  of  the  enemy  from  West  and  Central 
Galicia,  Mackensen's  army  continued  its  advance  without  a 
pause,  again  defeating  the  Russians  at  Grodek  (June  20th) 


232  THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW 

and  shortly  thereafter  occupying  Lemberg,  the  capital  of 
Galicia  (June  22nd). 

While  Linsingen's  army  and  the  right  wing  of  Macken- 
sen's  army  followed  the  rapidly  retreating  enemy  eastward 
to  the  sector  of  the  Zlota-Lipa  and  the  upper  Bug,  the  greater 
part  of  Mackensen's  army  turned  northward  in  order  (along 
with  the  army  of  Archduke  Joseph  Ferdinand)  to  remain 
on  the  heels  of  the  main  part  of  the  Russian  army,  which 
was  yielding  between  the  Bug  and  the  Vistula. 

However,  before  we  can  follow  the  movements  of  both 
these  armies  further,  it  will  be  necessary  to  turn  to  the  left 
wing  of  the  German  forces  in  the  east,  which  had  under- 
taken an  offensive  at  the  same  time — an  offensive  that  was 
related  to  the  attack  of  the  right  wing  just  described  in  so 
far  as  both  had  the  purpose  of  embracing  from  both  sides 
the  so-called  "central-position"  of  the  enemy  in  Russian 
Poland. 

In  the  winter  battle  in  the  Masurian  district  (February 
7th  and  8th),  Field-Marshal  von  Hindenburg  had  again 
trounced  the  Russian  forces  invading  East  Prussia  so  se- 
verely that  since  that  time  they  had  taken  up  a  defensive 
position,  on  Russian  soil,  on  the  strongly  fortified  Niemen- 
Bobr-Narew  line,  venturing  only  occasionally  to  disturb  our 
weak  covering  forces  in  this  region.  One  such  aggression 
was  undertaken  against  the  border-city  Memel  (March 
17th),  resulting  in  a  short-lived  occupation  of  this  city  by 
the  Russians.  In  order  to  punish  them  for  this  attack  on 
an  unfortified  city  and  to  prevent  a  repetition  of  similar 
unamiable  behavior,  a  special  army  was  created  in  the  north- 
ern part  of  East  Prussia  under  the  command  of  General 
von  Below,  which  was  entrusted  with  the  task  of  driving 
out  the  Russian  forces  that  had  appeared  north  of  the  Nie- 
men,  as  well  as  occupying  Samogitia  and  Courland.  De- 
spite the  obstinate  resistance  of  Russian  forces  hurriedly 
summoned  to  this  region,  Von  Below's  army  accomplished  its 
task  in  the  course  of  a  few  months;  supported  by  our  ma- 
rines, it  occupied  the  Baltic  ports  Libau  and  Windau  and 
forced  the  Russians  back  in  the  direction  of  Diinaburg,  Fried- 
richstadt,  and  Riga. 


THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW  233 

Eichhorn's  army  assumed  the  defense  of  East  Prussia 
against  the  fortress  of  Kovno  and  the  Russian  troops  still 
stationed  west  of  the  Niemen.  In  order  effectively  to  oppose 
invasion  of  the  southern  boundary  of  East  and  West  Prus- 
sia from  the  strongly  fortified  river-line  Bobr-Narew,  and 
at  the  same  time  to  carry  out  the  planned  offensive  against 
the  right  wing  of  the  "central  position"  in  Russian  Poland, 
two  new  armies  were  created  in  North  Poland  in  the  end  of 
June  under  Generals  von  Gallwitz  and  von  Scholtz.  In 
close  cooperation,  both  these  armies  then  drove  the  strong 
Russian  forces  opposing  them  back  upon  the  Bobr-Narew 
line  and  then  advanced  to  the  attack  of  this  line  from  Novo- 
Georgiewsk  to  Lomza.  After  they  had  occupied  the  for- 
tresses of  Ostrolenka  and  Rozan  and  Pultusk,  they  crossed 
the  Narew  at  several  points;  then  they  broke  the  resistance 
of  the  strong  Russian  troops  opposing  them  on  the  left  bank, 
and  resumed  their  advance  between  the  Narew  and  the  Bug, 
in  a  southeasterly  direction.  In  the  early  days  of  August, 
the  fortress  of  Lomza  was  taken,  and  the  fortress  of  Novo- 
Georgiewsk  surrounded  and  besieged. 

Let  us  return  now  to  the  right  wing,  to  Mackensen's 
army,  which  we  left  pursuing  its  way  northward  after  the 
crossing  of  the  San  and  the  capture  of  Lemberg,  following 
up  the  retreat  of  the  main  Russian  forces  between  the  Bug 
and  the  Vistula.  Naturally,  the  Russians  resisted  this  pur- 
suit most  obstinately,  summoning  fresh  troops  for  the  pur- 
pose; failure  to  check  the  triumphant  advance  of  the  armies 
of  the  allied  Central  Powers  meant  that  the  Russian  posi- 
tion along  the  fortified  Vistula  line  would  prove  untenable. 
During  the  month  of  July,  therefore,  severe  engagements 
developed  south  of  the  line  Cholm-Lublin,  ultimately  ter- 
minating in  favor  of  the  [Teuton]  Allies.  After  the  army 
of  Archduke  Joseph  Ferdinand,  fighting  on  the  left  wing  of 
the  Mackensen  army-group,  had  succeeded  in  breaking  the 
desperate  resistance  of  the  Russians  in  the  vicinity  of  Kras- 
nik,  the  right  wing  advanced  between  the  Bug  and  along 
both  banks  of  the  Wieprz,  so  that  by  the  end  of  July  the 
stretch  of  the  vital  railway  line,  Kiev-Ivangorod-Warsaw, 


234  THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW 

between  Cholm  and  Lublin,  had  fallen  into  the  possession  of 
this  army-group. 

This  strong  pressure  from  the  south  was  not  without 
its  effect  upon  the  Russian  forces  still  battling  along  the 
left  bank  of  the  Vistula.  Their  left  wing  forthwith  with- 
drew between  the  Vistula  and  the  Pilica  mainly  in  the  di- 
rection of  the  fortress  Ivangorod,  energetically  followed  by 
the  troops  under  Woyrsch.  While  the  right  wing  of  this 
army-division,  consisting  of  Austro-Hungarian  troops, 
turned  toward  Ivangorod,  General  Woyrsch  himself,  with  his 
Silesian  Landwehr,  effected  the  crossing  of  the  Vistula  be- 
low the  fortress,  where,  despite  strenuous  counter-attacks 
by  the  Russians,  he  succeeded  in  maintaining  himself  in  a 
hurriedly  improvised  bridgehead-like  position.  This  suc- 
cess was  of  great  moment  for  the  later  operations  along  the 
right  bank  of  the  Vistula. 

North  of  the  Pilica  also,  fighting  continually,  the  Rus- 
sians withdrew  toward  Warsaw,  and  finally,  after  they  had 
been  compelled  to  abandon  the  Blonie  position  they  had  so 
long  held  (August  3rd),  they  sought  shelter  behind  the  outer 
fortifications  of  Warsaw,  the  evacuation  of  which,  first  by 
the  civilian  population,  and  then  by  the  greater  part  of  the 
garrison,  had  already  been  ordered  by  the  Russian  High 
Command. 

In  the  meantime,  Mackensen's  army  had  continued  its 
pursuit  of  the  Russians  between  the  Bug  and  the  Vistula. 
Its  right  wing,  which  touched  the  Bug,  had  already  won 
a  safe  crossing  of  this  river  at  Vladimir- Volynski,  and  it 
fought  its  way  against  strong  opposition  through  the  nar- 
rows between  the  lakes  northeast  of  Leczna,  reaching  the 
line  Vlodava-Parczev ;  at  the  former  point  a  second  crossing 
of  the  Bug  was  won  and  made  tenable.  On  the  left  wing 
of  Mackensen's  army-group,  the  army  under  Archduke  Jo- 
seph Ferdinand  defeated  the  strong  Russian  forces  opposing 
it  at  Lubartov  and  drove  them  northward  across  the  lower 
Wieprz. 

This  uninterrupted  pursuit  of  the  Russians  between  the 
Bug  and  the  Vistula  on  the  part  of  Mackensen's  army-group, 
together  with  the  advance  of  the  right  wring  of  Hindenburg's 


THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW  235 

army-group  (the  armies  of  von  Scholtz  and  von  Gallwitz) 
against  the  lower  Bug,  described  above,  as  well  as  the  pres- 
sure of  those  forces  of  the  allied  Central  Powers  still  on  the 
left  bank  of  the  Vistula,  made  the  situation  of  the  Russians 
in  their  central  position  in  Russian  Poland  untenable,  so 
that  only  a  speeding  up  of  the  retreat  they  had  already  in- 
augurated could  save  them  from  worse,  as  the  events  which 
now  followed  blow  on  blow  clearly  demonstrate. 

On  August  4th,  the  army-group  under  Prince  Leopold 
of  Bavaria  captured  and  penetrated  the  outer  and  inner  for- 
tifications of  Warsaw  and  occupied  the  city  with  the  ex- 
ception of  the  suburb  of  Praga  on  the  right  bank  of  the 
Vistula,  whence  the  Russian  rearguard  still  bombarded  War- 
saw. Simultaneously  the  Austro-Hungarian  troops  under 
General  von  Kovess  captured  and  occupied  the  fortress  of 
Ivangorod  and  soon  established  on  the  right  bank  of  the 
Vistula  a  junction  with  the  left  wing  of  Mackensen's  army- 
group. 

By  the  occupation  of  both  these  Vistula  strongholds  the 
long  series  of  successes  achieved  by  the  allied  Powers  since 
the  early  days  of  May,  on  the  Dunajec  in  Galicia,  in  South 
and  North  Poland,  and  in  the  Baltic  Provinces,  were  fittingly 
crowned. 

BY  MARGARETE  MUNSTERBERG 

Condensed     from    the    accounts    in    the    popular    Berlin    periodical, 

"Kricgs-Rundschan" 

On  July  20,  191 5,  German  troops  forced  a  crossing  over 
the  Narew  River.  Meanwhile  Austrian-Hungarian  and 
German  armies  captured  Kostrzyn  and  Radom,  and  after 
bitter  fighting  pressed  onward  from  the  south,  between  the 
Bug  and  Vistula  Rivers,  toward  the  Vistula  Fortress  Ivan- 
gorod. This  was  closely  hedged  in  by  the  allied  [Teuton] 
troops  on  July  21st,  after  the  opponent  had  made  vain  efforts 
to  hinder  our  forward  march  toward  the  north  and  toward 
the  east.  In  the  early  morning  of  July  28th  General  von 
Woyrsch  forced  the  crossing  over  the  Vistula  at  several 
points.  The  Mackensen  army,  after  a  short  interruption, 
resumed  its  attack  on  July  29th,  and  broke  through  the  Rus- 


236 


THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW 


sian  position  to  the  west  of  Wieprz.  This  success  as  well 
as  the  attacks  of  Austrian-Hungarian  and  German  troops 
just  east  of  the  Vistula,  of  Prussian  guard  troops  near 
Kruke  and  of  other  German  troops  in  the  region  of 
Wojslawice  made  the  Russian  front  give  way  between  the 
Vistula  and  the  Bug.  On  July  30th  the  enemy  evacuated 
his  positions  along  the  whole  line. 

During  the  pursuit  we  captured  Lublin  and  passed 
through  Cholm. 

An  exceedingly  obstinate  defense  of  the  Russian  posi- 
tions round  Ivangorod  ensued.  It  was  marked  by  the  fol- 
lowing official  communication  from  Vienna  on  August  2, 
191 5:  "To  the  west  of  Ivangorod  our  Siebenbiirgen  regi- 
ments have  wrested  from  the  enemy  at  the  point  of  the  bayo- 
net eight  concrete  bulwarks  built  in  storied  form.  Four 
of  these  works  were  captured  alone  by  the  infantry  regi- 
ment, 50,  which  consists  chiefly  of  Rumanians.  The  semi- 
circle around  Ivangorod  was  drawn  considerably  tighter. 
We  captured  15  officers  and  over  2,300  men  and  carried  off 
29  pieces  of  artillery,  among  them  21  heavy  guns,  further 
11  machine  guns,  a  large  deposit  of  tools  and  much  muni- 
tion and  war  material.  Our  proved  Siebenbiirgen  troops 
may  count  this  day  among  the  most  glorious  of  their  hon- 
orable history." 

The  Austrian-Hungarian  troops  of  the  Woyrsch  army 
took  possession  of  the  western  part  of  Ivangorod  on  August 
3rd.  Meanwhile  Mackensen  once  more  drove  to  flight  the 
Russians  who  were  fighting  desperately  to  the  northeast  of 
Cholm  and  to  the  west  of  the  Bug.  On  August  4th  Ivan- 
gorod fell  into  the  hands  of  the  allied  Austrian-Hungarian 
and  German  troops. 

On  the  same  day  Warsaw  was  conquered. 

After  the  Russians  on  August  3rd  had  been  thrust  back 
to  the  outer  line  of  defense,  Prince  Leopold  of  Bavaria  had 
his  army  start  the  attack  on  Warsaw.  The  announcement  of 
victory  from  the  great  headquarters  on  August  5,  191 5,  read 
thus :  "The  army  of  Prince  Leopold  of  Bavaria  broke 
through  and  yesterday  and  to-night  took  possession  of  the 
outer  and  inner  lines  of  forts  of  Warsaw,  in  which  the  Rus- 


THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW  237 

sian    rearguard    still    offered    stubborn    resistance.      This 
morning  the  city  was  occupied  by  our  troops." 

The  Russian  command  dismissed  the  fall  of  Warsaw  in 
the  official  communication  of  August  6th  in  the  following 
words :  "As  a  result  of  the  conditions  brought  about  by 
the  general  situation,  our  troops  to  the  west  of  Warsaw  were 
commanded  to  fall  back  on  the  right  shore  of  the  Vistula. 
According  to  the  report  which  has  arrived,  this  command 
was  carried  out.  The  troops  that  covered  Warsaw  returned, 
without  being  attacked  by  the  enemy,  to  the  new  front 
marked  out  for  them,  after  they  had  blown  up  behind  them 
all  bridges  over  the  Vistula." 

At  a  stormy  session  of  the  Duma  on  August  1st,  the 
Russian  War  Minister,  Polivanof,  said  in  a  long  speech: 
"At  this  moment  the  enemy  has  concentrated  unusually 
strong  forces  against  us,  which  step  by  step  are  encompassing 
the  territory  of  the  military  district  of  Warsaw,  whose 
strategic  boundary  lines  have  always  been  the  weak  spot  on 
our  western  border.  Under  these  conditions  we  may  leave 
a  part  of  this  district  to  the  enemy,  and  fall  back  upon 
positions  where  our  army  can  prepare  once  more  to  take 
the  offensive.  This  is  the  end  which  crowns  the  tactics  tried 
in  18 1 2.  To-day  we  may  leave  Warsaw  to  the  enemy,  as 
we  evacuated  Moscow  at 'that  time,  in  order  to  insure  final 
victory." 

The  revolutionary  papers  of  Warsaw  during  the  critical 
days  of  the  evacuation  are  said  to  have  spread  declarations 
inciting  the  people  to  oppose  the  military  authorities.  The 
men  of  the  Ochrana  kept  up  a  reign  of  terror. 

In  the  papers  of  Germany  and  its  friends  the  conquest  of 
Warsaw  was  celebrated  as  the  "crowning  event  of  the  first 
war  year."  The  voices  of  the  enemy  press  everywhere  be- 
trayed ill-concealed  worry  over  the  "successful  withdrawal" 
of  the  Russian  armies.  The  irresistible  advance  of  the  Ger- 
man and  Austrian-Hungarian  armies  from  the  south  as  well 
as  in  the  north  brought  these  worries  to  the  point  of  despair, 
of  accusations  and  foolish  hopes.  Russia  scolded  the  "in- 
activity" of  the  allies  on  the  West  front,  France  complained 
of    the   desultoriness    of    the    Russian    strategy,    England 


238  THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW 

smoothed  things  over  by  pointing  to  Constantinople.  There 
was  much  racking  of  brains  over  the  German  "pincers"  in 
the  east. 

Meanwhile  the  German  group  on  the  Narew  was  fast 
approaching  its  goal — the  closing  in  of  Novo-Georgiewsk. 
In  spite  of  the  stubborn  resistance  of  the  Russians  on  the 
line  from  Lomza  to  the  mouth  of  the  Bug  River,  on  August 
7th  our  troops  took  possession  of  Zegrze,  an  outer  forti- 
fication of  Novo-Georgiewsk.  The  next  day  the  strongest 
Vistula  fortress  in  the  east  was  isolated  between  the  Narew 
and  the  Vistula. 

From  August  9th  to  10th  Lomza  was  stormed.  Conse- 
quently the  Russian  defensive  positions  gave  way  at  the 
Bobre  in  the  direction  of  Ossowiec  and  farther  on  toward 
the  Niemen;  the  strength  of  the  fortresses  of  Grodno  and 
Kovno,  however,  still  made  resistance  possible. 

Fort  Benjamin,  east  of  Novo-Georgiewsk,  which  the  en- 
emy had  evacuated,  was  occupied  August  10th;  our  airships 
at  the  same  time  threw  bombs  on  Novo-Georgiewsk  and 
Brest-Litovsk.  In  forced  marches  the  groups  of  Generals 
von  Scholz  and  von  Gallwitz  pressed  on  toward  the  south- 
east as  far  as  Sokolow,  breaking  the  stubborn  resistance  of 
the  Russians  section  by  section.  Toward  the  northeast  the 
crossing  over  the  Nurzec  between*  the  Narew  and  the  Bug 
was  forced  after  bloody  fighting. 

Contemporaneously  with  the  advance  of  the  German 
group  at  the  Narew,  the  troops  of  Archduke  Josef  Ferdi- 
nand, of  General  von  Woyrsch  and  Marshal  von  Macken- 
sen  broke  the  resistance  of  the  Russians  between  the  Bug  and 
the  Vistula.  After  the  capture  of  Lubartow  and  a  victory 
near  Miechow,  they  advanced  on  August  7th  and  8th  across 
the  Wieprz ;  on  August  14th  they  gained  the  railroad  Lukow- 
Brest-Litovsk,  to  which  Mackensen  had  pressed  on  across 
the  Rokitno  marshes.  German  troops  under  Mackensen 
protected  the  eastern  wing  of  the  victoriously  advancing 
armies. 

While  the  pincers  from  the  Narew  and  the  Bug-Vistula 
were  closing  tighter  and  tighter,  an  event  of  great  signifi- 
cance was  going  on  by  the  Niemen : 


THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW  239 

The  Storming  of  Kovno 

On  August  1 6th  troops  of  the  army  of  General  von 
Eichhorn  under  the  leadership  of  General  Litzmann  stormed 
the  forts  of  the  southwestern  front  of  Kovno.  Forty-five 
hundred  men  and  240  guns  were  captured.  On  August  18th, 
so  memorable  in  German  war  history,  the  following  official 
announcement  of  victory  was  made :  "The  fortress  Kovno 
with  all  forts  and  innumerable  material,  including  more  than 
400  guns,  is  in  German  hands  since  to-night.  It  was  taken 
by  storm  in  spite  of  the  most  stubborn  resistance." 

A  few  days  later  a  longer  account  was  given  out  from 
high  headquarters : 

"On  August  17th  the  chief  bulwark  of  the  Niemen  line, 
the  first-class  fortress  Kovno,  fell  into  our  hands.  As  early 
as  July  the  extensive  forests  in  front  of  the  western  side  of 
the  fortress  were  evacuated  by  the  enemy ;  thus  it  was  made 
possible  to  prepare  adequate  ways  of  approach  and  to  make 
the  necessary  explorations.  On  August  6th  the  attack  on 
the  fortress  began.  Through  the  daring  assistance  of  the 
infantry,  observation  points  were  won  for  the  artillery,  and 
the  guns  were  successfully  installed,  though  with  extreme 
difficulty  in  the  roadless  wooded  regions.  So  it  was  pos- 
sible, on  August  8th,  for  the  artillery  to  open  fire.  While  it 
directed  an  overwhelming  fire  on  the  protecting  outposts  and 
at  the  same  time  on  the  permanent  works  of  the  fortress, 
infantry  and  pioneers  were  working  their  way  forward  un- 
ceasingly, day  and  night,  with  constant  heavy  fighting.  Not 
less  than  eight  bulwarks  were  taken  by  storm  up  to  August 
15th,  each  a  fortress  by  itself,  which  had  been  built  during 
months  of  toil  with  all  the  means  of  the  engineering  art  and 
obviously  enormous  expenditure  in  money  and  labor.  Fre- 
quent very  strong  counter-attacks  of  the  Russians  against 
the  front  and  the  southern  flanks  of  our  attacking  troops 
were  repulsed  with  heavy  losses  for  the  opponent. 

"On  August  1 6th  the  attack  was  carried  nearly  up  to  the 
permanent  line  of  forts.  By  means  of  artillery  fire  of  the 
utmost  strength,  brilliantly  directed  with  the  aid  of  balloon 
and  aircraft  observations,  the  garrison  of  the  forts,  the  con- 


24o  THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW 

necting  lines  and  the  intermediate  batteries  were  shaken  to 
such  a  degree  and  the  works  so  greatly  damaged  that  the 
latter  too  could  be  stormed.  By  pressing  on  irresistibly,  the 
infantry  at  first  broke  through  Fort  2;  then,  by  wheeling  in 
against  its  rear  and  crushing  the  front,  it  stormed  the  whole 
line  of  forts  between  the  Jesia  and  Niemen.  The  artillery, 
which  was  hurriedly  moved  forward,  immediately  began  to 
bombard  the  central  fortification  of  the  Western  front  and 
after  its  fall,  on  August  17th,  to  bombard  the  enemy  forces 
which  had  retreated  to  the  eastern  shore  of  the  Niemen. 
Under  cover  of  the  artillery,  which  had  been  drawn  up  close 
to  the  Niemen,  the  river  was  won  in  the  midst  of  enemy 
fire,  at  first  by  single  small  sections,  then  by  stronger  forces. 
A  double  set  of  bridges  was  quickly  erected  in  place  of  the 
bridges  destroyed  by  the  enemy. 

"In  the  course  of  August  17th,  the  forts  of  the  northern 
front,  which  had  already  been  attacked  from  the  north,  as 
well  as  the  eastern  front  and  finally  the  southern  front 
capitulated.  Besides  more  than  20,000  prisoners,  we  won  an 
immeasurable  booty,  over  600  guns,  among  them  innumer- 
able ones  of  heavy  caliber  and  highly  modern  construction, 
huge  stores  of  munitions,  innumerable  machine  guns,  search- 
lights and  army  tools  of  all  kinds,  automobiles  and  rubber 
tires,  provisions  worth  millions.  Considering  the  great  ex- 
tension of  this  modern  fortress,  an  exact  counting  of  the 
booty  will  naturally  be  the  work  of  days.  The  booty  in- 
creases from  hour  to  hour.  Hundreds  of  recruits  were 
picked  up  in  the  city  deserted  by  the  enemy.  According  to 
their  statements,  in  the  last  moment  15,000  unarmed  reserves 
were  removed  like  fugitives  from  the  city. 

"This  circumstance  obviously  proves  that  the  Russian 
command  considered  the  speedy  fall  of  the  strongest  Rus- 
sian fortress  an  impossibilty ;  so  also  do  the  desperate  coun- 
ter-attacks of  the  Russians — though  unsuccessful,  like  the 
previous  ones — which  started  once  more  from  the  south, 
even  after  the  fall  of  the  fortress.  How  highly  they  valued 
the  possession  of  this  fortress  is  proved  not  only  by  its 
powerful  structure  and  its  unusually  plentiful  artillery  equip- 
ment, but  also  by  the  fact  that  the  resistance  of  the  outer 


THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW  241 

garrison  was  kept  up  till  the  last  moment  and  by  the  number 
of  prisoners  which  fell  into  our  hands,  which,  under  these 
conditions,  was  comparatively  large." 

The  success  on  the  Niemen  was  followed  immediately  by 
the  conquest  of  Novo-Georgiewsk. 

As  early  as  August  16th  a  large  fort  and  two  interme- 
diate works  on  the  northeastern  front  of  the  strong  Vistula 
fortress  had  been  taken  by  storm.  Twenty-four  hundred 
prisoners  and  19  guns  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  victor.  On 
the  next  day,  two  more  forts  on  the  northeastern  front  were 
stormed  and  20  guns  captured.  On  August  18th,  while  the 
German  colors  were  being  hoisted  over  Kovno,  the  German 
storm  troops  occupied  the  Wkra  section  on  the  northeastern 
side  of  Novo-Georgiewsk  and  captured  125  guns.  Then  the 
fate  of  the  defenders  was  decided.  The  report  of  our  high- 
est command  of  August  20th  says:  "The  fortress  Novo- 
Georgiewsk,  the  last  stronghold  of  the  enemy  in  Poland,  has 
been  taken  after  stubborn  resistance.  The  whole  garrison 
was  captured  :  6  generals,  over  85,000  men,  in  the  final  battle 
yesterday  alone  over  20,000.  The  number  of  captured  guns 
rose  to  over  700,  the  amount  of  the  remaining  war  material 
taken  by  us  cannot  yet  be  determined." 

The  irresistible  advance  of  the  victorious  armies  next 
caused  the  enemy  to  evacuate  Ossowiec,  the  stronghold  in 
the  marshes  which  had  already  cost  much  blood ;  for  he  had 
learned  his  lesson  from  the  fall  of  Kovno  and  Novo-Geor- 
giewsk. On  August  22nd  Ossowiec  was  occupied.  The 
small  fortress,  Olita,  and  the  larger  one,  Grodno,  could  still 
maintain  themselves,  protected  as  they  were  by  marshes  and 
lakes,  which  reminded  one  of  the  Masurian  district. 

Meanwhile  after  having  occupied  the  city  Sidlice  (Au- 
gust 1 2th),  the  Woyrsch  army  had  advanced  across  the  Bug 
near  Miolnik  on  August  18th.  The  opponent  offered  strong 
resistance  to  our  advance,  especially  to  the  west  of  Brest- 
Litovsk.  On  the  eastern  shore  of  the  Bug  around  Wlodawa 
the  northward  pursuit  of  the  Mackensen  group  was  kept  up 
energetically.  For  the  Russians  the  railroad  to  the  north 
from  Brest-Litovsk  played  an  important  part;  for  the  de- 
parture  from   Brest-Litovsk  might  be  endangered  by  the 


242  THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW 

troops  of  General  von  Gallwitz  which  were  marching  from 
the  north  via  Bialystok,  and  by  the  group  of  Prince  Leopold 
of  Bavaria  which  was  advancing  eastward  to  Litovsk.  On 
August  22nd,  therefore,  in  the  region  round  Bielsk  as  well 
as  to  the  east  of  Wlodawa  as  far  as  the  neighborhood  of 
Kovel,  the  enemy  started  violent  counter-attacks  which,  how- 
ever, could  not  long  prevent  the  advance  of  our  troops. 

After  Austrian,  Hungarian,  and  German  cavalry  had 
entered  Kovel  on  August  23rd,  German  forces  drove  the  en- 
emy northeast  of  Wlodawa  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  woody 
and  marshy  zone.  Heavily  beaten,  the  Russians  fled  also  be- 
fore the  army  of  Prince  Leopold  of  Bavaria  into  the  in- 
terior of  the  Bialovieska  forest.  On  August  26,  191 5,  Brest- 
Litovsk  had  fallen. 

The  official  communication  read :  "The  fortress  of  Brest- 
Litovsk  has  fallen.  While  the  Austrian-Hungarian  corps 
of  Field-Marshal  von  Arz,  after  fighting,  took  two  forts  of 
the  western  front  yesterday  afternoon,  the  Brandenburg  re- 
serve corps  22  took  by  storm  the  works  of  the  northwestern 
front  and  penetrated  by  night  into  the  central  fortification. 
Thereupon  the  enemy  gave  up  the  fortress.  On  the  whole 
front  of  the  army  group,  from  Bialovieska  forest  to  the 
marshy  district  by  the  Pripet,  the  pursuit  is  in  full  swing. 

"Highest  Command." 

The  official  statement  from  Vienna  said :  "The  for- 
tress Brest-Litovsk  has  fallen.  The  Hungarian  'Landzvehr' 
troops  of  General  von  Arz  wrested  from  the  enemy  the  vil- 
lage Kobylany,  situated  southwest  of  the  fortress,  thereby 
broke  through  the  outer  circle  of  defense  and  fell  upon  the 
nearest  fortification.  At  the  same  time  West  Galician,  Si- 
lesian  and  North  Moravian  army  infantry  took  by  storm  a 
fort  south  of  the  municipality  Koroszczyn.  German  troops 
took  possession  of  three  works  on  the  northwestern  front  and 
early  this  morning  occupied  a  citadel  situated  by  the  rail- 
road bridge.  Meanwhile  the  allies  also  forced  back  the  en- 
emy across  the  Lesna  and  in  the  woody  and  marshy  region 
southeast  of  Brest-Litovsk.  Our  cavalry,  which  pursued 
them  northward  from  Kovel,  beat  Russian  rearguards  near 
Bucin  and  Wyzwa." 


THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW  243 

The  result  of  the  offensive  in  Russia  was  officially 
summed  up  thus  at  the  end  of  August : 

"At  the  present  point  of  time,  when  a  certain  end  has  been 
reached  in  our  continuous  operations  through  the  fall  of  the 
interior  Russian  line  of  defense,  it  is  instructive  to  recall 
briefly  the  result  reached  so  far  by  the  offensive,  which  began 
on  May  2nd  when  we  broke  through  near  Gorlice. 

"The  strength  of  the  united  Russian  forces  which  grad- 
ually suffered  the  main  brunt  of  our  attack  may  be  estimated 
low,  at  about  1,400,000  men.  In  the  battles  the  round  sum 
of  1,100,000  men  were  captured  and  at  least  300,000  men 
were  killed  or  wounded,  if  the  number  of  those  thus  put  out 
of  combat  (not  including  the  sick)  is  estimated  very  low. 
It  must  be  higher,  for  the  enemy  has  naturally  suffered 
enormous  bloody  losses  since  he  tried  to  cover  his  hasty  re- 
treat chiefly  by  infantry  without  any  consideration  of  human 
life,  in  order  to  save  the  remainder  of  his  artillery. 

"Thus  we  may  say  that  the  armies  which  had  the  brunt  of 
our  offensive  have  been  completely  annihilated. 

"The  fact  that  our  opponent  still  has  troops  on  the  bat- 
tlefield may  be  explained  thus :  he  has  drawn  upon  the  divi- 
sions held  in  readiness  for  an  offensive  against  Turkey  in 
Southern  Russia;  he  has  hastily  brought  forward  a  great 
many  half-trained  reserves  from  the  interior  of  Russia; 
finally  he  has  moved  numerous  soldiers,  singly  and  in  small 
companies,  to  the  north  from  those  fronts  where  our  pres- 
sure made  itself  less  felt.  All  these  measures  have  not  been 
able  to  check  disaster. 

"The  enemy  has  been  driven  from  Galicia,  Poland,  Cour- 
land,  Lithuania;  his  closed  front  has  been  torn  open,  his 
armies  are  rushing  back  in  two  wholly  divided  groups.  Not 
less  than  twelve  fortresses,  among  them  four  large  ones  of 
wholly  modern  construction,  fell  into  the  hands  of  our  brave, 
loyal  fighters  and  with  them  the  outer  as  well  as  the  inner 
line  of  protection  of  the  Russian  Empire." 

BY   PRINCESS  RADZIWILL 

The  loss  of  Kovno,  strange  as  it  may  appear,  produced  in 
Petrograd  a  far  deeper  impression  than  the  fall  of  Warsaw. 


244  THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW 

Important  as  the  latter  undoubtedly  was  from  the  political 
point  of  view,  it  lay  far  more  within  the  limits  of  probabil- 
ity to  see  the  Polish  capital  taken  by  the  enemy,  who,  ever 
since  the  beginning  of  the  wai ,  had  lain  almost  at  its  doors, 
than  to  admit  the  possibility  of  one  of  the  greatest  and  strong- 
est Russian  fortresses  being  stormed  by  the  German  troops. 
Besides,  Kovno  was  in  Russia,  and  its  possession  by  the 
Kaiser  meant  a  good  deal  more  to  every  Russian  patriot 
than  any  Polish  territory.  Apart  from  sentimental  rea- 
sons, Kovno  represented  an  immense  quantity  of  war  ma- 
terial, guns,  ammunition,  and  provisions  of  every  kind,  which 
had  accumulated  within  its  walls  from  the  beginning  of  the 
campaign.  It  was  bitter  to  see  all  this  captured,  and  even 
more  so  to  find  that  we  had  not  been  given  a  chance  to  de- 
fend it.  The  evacuation  of  the  fortress  began  late  in  June, 
when,  by  order  of  the  Grand  Duke,  a  certain  quantity  of  guns 
had  been  withdrawn.  In  July  some  of  the  advance  forts 
which  defended  the  entrance  to  the  stronghold  had  fallen 
into  the  hands  of  the  Germans,  but  it  was  only  on  the  6th 
of  August  that  a  serious  attack  was  started,  and  on  the  8th 
heavy  siege  artillery  opened  a  murderous  fire  against  our 
positions.  Eight  forts  in  succession  were  stormed  between 
that  date  and  the  15th  of  August,  and  the  cannonade  sur- 
passed in  intensity  anything  ever  experienced  before.  The 
firing  was  heard  farther  than  Vilna,  and  carried  terror  into 
the  hearts  of  the  unfortunate  inhabitants  of  the  country  sur- 
rounding the  besieged  town.  On  the  16th  of  August  the  Ger- 
man infantry  had  been  able  to  advance  as  far  as  the  line  of 
the  permanent  fortifications  which  defended  the  immediate 
approach  to  the  fortress,  taking  by  assault  trenches  and  po- 
sitions which,  when  not  held  by  a  small  number  of  men — 
many  of  them  wounded, — were  already  abandoned.  The 
whole  day  of  the  17th  of  August  passed  in  one  attack  on  the 
eastern  side  of  the  Niemen;  the  bridge  was  destroyed  by 
German  shells,  the  forts  on  the  north  flank  were  burned 
down,  and  in  the  evening  the  entire  southern  side  fell  into 
the  hands  of  the  enemy.  The  town  itself,  with  its  last  line 
of  fortifications,  then  had  to  capitulate,  together  with  the 
20,000  men  still  left  of  its  once  strong  garrison. 


THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW  245 

It  was  this  capitulation  which  was  so  bitterly  resented  by 
Russian  society.  It  produced  a  disastrous  impression  in 
Petrograd,  and  shook  the  last  remnants  of  the  Grand  Duke's 
former  popularity.  A  letter  received  from  the  Russian  capi- 
tal, which  bore  the  date  August  20th,  expressed  itself  in  the 
following  terms  upon  this  subject : 

"I  do  not  know  what  impression  the  fall  of  Kovno  may 
have  produced  abroad.   Here  the  consternation  surpasses 
everything  I  have  ever  seen  before,  and  even  after  the  disas- 
ters of  Mukden  and  Tsu  Shima,  at  the  time  of  the  Japanese 
war,  there  was  not  such  a  general  depression  as  now  per- 
vades the  whole  atmosphere  of  Petrograd.  The  pessimists, 
who  prophesied  that  no  good  could  ever  result  from  the 
Grand  Duke  being  in  supreme  military  command,  rejoice  to 
see  their  prognostications  verified,  but  even  they   forbear 
from  indulging  in  the  usual  T  told  you  so'  dear  to  the  hu- 
man heart.     The  situation  is  felt  to  be  far  too  serious  for 
vain  boasting.  The  one  thing  which  dominates  is  the  knowl- 
edge that  not  only  we  have  been  beaten,  but  also  that  we  did 
not  defend  ourselves  as  we  ought  to  have  done.     It  is  most 
difficult  to  persuade  a  whole  nation  as  bitterly  disappointed 
as  Russia  has  been  that  strategical  reasons  require  us  to 
retire  and  avoid  the  chance  of  an  encounter  face  to  face  with 
our  enemy.    One  must  be  a  soldier  to  judge  of  such  things, 
and  laymen  can  only  feel  the  disgrace  of  this  surrender  of 
our  positions.     One  cannot  understand  how  it  happens  that 
our  army,  which,  according  to  what  we  have  been  told,  was 
plentifully  supplied  with  all  that  it  required,  found  itself 
suddenly  without  the  means  of  defense.    The  nation  does  not 
differentiate  between  a  retreat  executed  in  perfect  order,  as 
ours  has  been,  and  a  flight.     It  easily  mistakes  the  one  for 
the  other,  and  its  intelligence  fails  to  grasp  how  it  comes 
about  that,  after  we  have  been  assured  all  along  that  our 
territory  was  secured  against  any  invasion  of  the  enemy  by 
a  line  of  fortresses  so  strong  that  no  army  in  the  world  could 
possibly  take  them,   this  line,  the  erection  of  which  had 
cost  so  much  money,  was  suddenly  pronounced  to  be  worth 
nothing  at  all — to  constitute,  indeed,  a  danger  for  our  troops 
had  they  remained.    The  impression  that  lies  have  been  told 


246  THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW 

is  possessing  the  mind  of  the  public,  which  begins  to  say 
definitely  that  somebody  has  been  guilty  of  systematic  deceit. 
It  is  a  thousand  pities,  because  once  the  confidence  of  the 
nation  in  its  leaders  is  shaken  it  will  not  respond  with  the 
one-time  readiness  to  future  appeals  to  its  spirit  of  self-sac- 
rifice and  devotion.  The  great  danger  of  such  a  frame  of 
mind  is  too  serious  not  to  engross  the  attention  of  all  those 
who  look  farther  than  the  present  day. 

"It  is  now  that  the  mistake  made  from  the  very  begin- 
ning of  confiding  the  supreme  command  to  a  member  of  the 
Imperial  family  becomes  apparent  in  all  its  nakedness.  It 
would  have  been  easy  to  punish  any  Commander-in-Chief  of 
lesser  birth,  but  with  a  Grand  Duke  this  could  not  be  thought 
of.  A  certain  portion  of  Petrograd  society  is  clamoring  for 
the  dismissal  of  the  Grand  Duke  Nicholas,  and  curious 
stories  are  related  concerning  his  growing  unpopularity 
among  the  army,  his  tyrannical  character  and  general  reck- 
lessness; but  either  these  stories  do  not  reach  Tsarskoye  Selo, 
or  the  Sovereign  is  afraid  of  deposing  a  relative  quite  capable 
of  resisting  his  authority.  This  at  least  is  what  one  hears 
from  all  sides,  though,  personally,  I  do  not  believe  any  of 
these  stories.  Ruthless  as  the  Grand  Duke  may  be,  he  would 
not  dream  of  opposing  the  Emperor  or  failing  in  the  per- 
formance of  any  Royal  command.  I  am  satisfied  that  the 
story  of  his  refusal  to  defend  Kovno  has  been  invented  by 
busybodies  anxious  to  appear  to  know  everything.  The  re- 
treat was  a  necessity  in  consequence  of  the  lack  of  ammuni- 
tion. Had  we  stopped  to  meet  the  Prussians  and  their  big 
guns,  we  should  simply  have  sacrificed  the  bulk  of  our  army 
to  no  purpose.  Besides,  the  conditions  of  modern  war- 
fare have  quite  done  away  with  the  old  tradition  of  strong 
fortresses.  It  is  too  little  realized  that  not  one  of  them  can 
resist  the  murderous  fire  of  the  fat  and  lean  Berthas  with 
which  the  Prussians  are  provided.  And  so  mankind  is  bound 
to  be  impressed  by  events  of  such  magnitude  as  the  loss  of 
Ivangorod  and  of  Kovno,  which  most  probably  will  be  fol- 
lowed by  the  fall  of  the  other  fortresses  on  the  Vistula  and 
beyond  it.  In  military  circles  they  are  quite  convinced  that 
Brest-Litovsk,  too,  will  fall,  after  which  arises  the  question 


THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW  247 

whether  the  Germans  will  be  able  to  cope  with  the  difficulty  of 
the  Pinsk  Marshes  and  to  cross  that  most  dangerous  region. 
My  private  opinion  is  that  they  will  not  succeed  in  this  part 
of  their  devilish  program.  It  is  August  already,  and  in  an- 
other three  weeks  the  autumn  rains  will  start,  which,  even 
in  the  best  of  cases,  must  considerably  delay  them,  and  turn 
their  attention  to  their  winter  quarters  in  preference  to  every- 
thing else. 

"I  also  fail  to  see  the  reason  for  the  panic  which  seems 
to  have  got  hold  of  the  population  of  Petrograd;  in  these 
days  of  aircraft  and  railways  one  is  apt  to  forget  the  dis- 
tances which  make  our  country  such  a  wonderful  place.  It  is 
easy  for  newspaper  reporters  to  say  that  within  a  few  days 
the  enemy  will  be  at  the  gates  of  our  capital.  In  reality, 
such  a  thing  is  out  of  the  range  of  human  possibility  if  we 
take  into  account  the  difficulty  of  moving  a  whole  army,  with 
its  baggage  and  artillery,  in  an  unknown  country,  where  the 
roads  are  full  of  obstacles  of  a  nature  this  enemy  does  not 
even  suspect.  Certainly  the  situation  is  serious,  but  not  des- 
perate. The  Germans  are  far  from  having  won  the  war, 
which  will  turn  out  to  be  a  question  of  patience  and  endur- 
ance. Strong  as  they  are,  their  number  will  diminish  sooner 
than  that  of  the  Allies,  and  this  day  twelve  months  we  shall 
see  whether  they  stand  as  well  as  they  do  at  the  present  mo- 
ment. If  only  we  remain  quiet  in  regard  to  matters  of  home 
politics,  I  quite  believe  that  we  shall  teach  the  Germans  a 
lesson  they  will  be  compelled  to  take  to  heart,  whether  they 
wish  it  or  not." 

My  correspondent  saw  perhaps  clearer  than  most  people 
the  unfortunate  turn  which  the  campaign  had  taken  during 
that  summer  of  1915.  If  one  had  been  assured  that  ammu- 
nition would  be  forthcoming  in  the  near  future,  one  might 
have  looked  at  things  with  more  equanimity.  Unfortunately, 
such  was  far  from  being  the  case.  On  the  contrary,  one 
dreaded  that,  despite  the  promises  of  the  Government,  the 
indifference  of  officials  would  allow  the  important  matter  of 
the  armaments  to  remain  in  a  condition  of  shocking  and 
culpable  neglect.  People  clamored  for  the  day  when  the 
Duma  would  meet  again,  and  all  kinds  of  things  were  fore- 


248  THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW 

seen  in  connection  with  that  impending  event.  Rumors  of 
a  revolution  went  about,  which  were  further  strengthened  by 
unrestrained  gossip. 

On  the  21st  of  August  the  railway  line  of  Wlodawa- 
Brest-Litovsk  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Germans,  who  began 
with  their  usual  thoroughness  to  mass  their  armies  around 
Brest-Litovsk,  the  most  important  point  of  defense  upon 
which  the  Grand  Duke  had  reckoned  in  his  continual  retreat. 
It  must  not  be  forgotten,  when  reviewing  the  events  of  that 
memorable  month  of  August,  191 5,  that  the  principal  aim  of 
the  German  Staff  was  to  cut  the  communications  between 
the  different  Russian  armies,  especially  of  the  groups  which 
were  still  gathered  about  the  Niemen,  and  which  consti- 
tuted, even  without  sufficient  ammunition,  a  formidable 
source  of  danger  to  the  enemy,  who  advanced  toward  Vilna 
as  hurriedly  as  circumstances  allowed,  hoping  to  enter  this 
town  even  before  they  had  captured  Brest-Litovsk,  and 
thus  cut  off  our  troops  from  their  base.  But  all  their  efforts 
to  surround  us,  or  to  oblige  us  to  accept  the  battle  which 
they  hoped  would  end  in  our  defeat,  were  useless.  The  Grand 
Duke  began  to  reproach  himself  for  not  having  insisted  that 
he  must  have  ammunition  enough  to  cope  with  the  enter- 
prising adversary.  With  great  courage  he  accepted  blame 
which  was  not  his  alone,  and  determined  to  save  the  army  at 
all  costs.  A  retreat,  painful  though  it  might  be,  would  not 
rob  the  troops  of  their  courage  and  affect  their  morale  in  a 
dangerous  manner,  as  would  a  lost  battle.  No  matter  at 
what  cost,  the  army  had  to  be  saved.  This  point  established, 
the  Grand  Duke  acted  in  accordance  with  it,  and  so,  in  spite 
of  a  storm  of  indignation,  and  even  of  ridicule,  he  brought 
the  Russian  army  beyond  the  reach  of  the  German  artillery, 
there  to  entrench  and  prepare  itself  for  the  day  when  once 
more  it  would  take  the  offensive. 

The  Austrians,  who  were  sent  forward  to  attack  the  ad- 
vance works  of  the  fortification  that  guarded  the  entrance 
to  Brest-Litovsk,  were  commanded  nominally  by  their  own 
officers,  in  reality  by  Germans.  They  started  a  desperate 
assault  during  the  early  hours  of  the  25th  of  August  against 
the  line  of  forts  which  stretched  from  the  village  of  Wys- 


THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW  249 

sokie-Litovsk,  where  stood  the  splendid  castle  of  the  Coun- 
tess Potocka,  up  to  the  town  of  Brest  itself.  For  a  whole 
day  they  fought  without  intermission,  and  thousands  of  men 
perished  in  trenches  that  had  to  be  carried  with  the  bayo- 
net. The  Russians  retired  towards  the  Bug,  defending  their 
ground  inch  by  inch,  burning  the  town,  blowing  up  the 
railway  station,  the  post-office  (buildings  that  might  prove 
of  some  utility  to  the  enemy),  and  the  barracks  which  had 
been  occupied  by  their  troops.  After  nearly  twenty-four 
hours  of  uninterrupted  struggle,  and  as  the  last  line  of  for- 
tifications was  about  to  be  stormed,  the  Prussians,  who  up 
to  that  time  had  remained  passive  spectators  of  the  battle 
which  had  been  raging,  sent  one  of  their  reserve  corps  to  the 
assistance  of  the  Austrians,  and  it  was  this  corps  which 
was  the  first  to  enter  the  still  burning  ruins  of  what  had  once 
been  the  flourishing  town  of  Brest-Litovsk.  The  railway 
line  had  already  been  occupied  by  the  Germans  a  few  days, 
and  they  started  at  once  to  repair  it,  so  as  to  assure  their  line 
of  communication  with  Warsaw  and  with  Eastern  Prussia 
in  the  north  and  west,  and  with  Kowal  in  the  south. 

In  spite  of  their  clamorous  joy  at  this  new  success,  it 
remains  to  be  proved  whether  later  on  it  turns  out  to  be 
of  real  advantage  to  them.  The  whole  population  of  Brest, 
which  was  mostly  Jewish,  did  not  take  kindly  to  the  invaders, 
or  to  the  new  regulations  which  the  latter  introduced  into 
the  happy-go-lucky  Lithuanian  town.  In  Warsaw  they  had 
received  some  sympathy  of  a  kind,  but  in  Brest  it  was  dif- 
ferent. First  of  all,  most  of  the  inhabitants  had  fled,  and 
those  who  remained  were  utterly  ruined,  and  could  not  be 
of  much  use  to  their  conquerors.  Provisions  also  were  lack- 
ing. The  factories  were  devoid  of  machinery,  and  the  whole 
place  presented  an  aspect  of  desolation.  The  Germans  were 
in  possession  of  the  fortress  which  they  had  coveted  for  such 
a  long  time ;  they  found  nothing  but  ruin.  This  is  the  plain 
and  unvarnished  truth.  The  great  successes  of  the  Prus- 
sians were  only  obtained  because  they  met  with  absolutely 
no  resistance.  Had  the  Russians  possessed  as  much  ammu- 
nition as  their  enemies,  it  is  a  question  whether  the  Germans 
could  have  advanced  into  the  interior  of  Poland  and  Lithua- 


250  THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW 

nia  as  easily  as  they  did.  This  was  a  fact  to  which  they 
were  very  careful  not  to  draw  the  attention  of  the  world. 
On  the  contrary,  they  hastened  to  issue  a  notice  which  they 
hoped  would  excite  German  enthusiasm,  so  as  to  prepare  the 
nation  for  the  further  sacrifices  which  its  Government  per- 
fectly well  knew  it  would  have  to  ask  from  it  within  a  very 
short  time.  This  notice  is  so  typical  of  German  lies  that 
it  deserves  to  be  reproduced  here,  if  only  to  point  out  the 
numerous  inaccuracies  with  which  it  abounds : 

"The  strength  of  the  Russian  armies  which  opposed 
us,"  begins  this  extraordinary  official  communique,  "cannot 
be  estimated  as  less  than  1,400,000  men.  Of  this  number, 
1,100,000  have  fallen  into  our  hands  and  are  prisoners, 
whilst  at  least  300,000  men  have  been  killed  or  are  com- 
pletely disabled.  Probably  the  numbers  are  even  higher  than 
stated,  if  we  take  into  account  that,  in  order  to  save  what  was 
left  of  their  artillery,  the  Russians  covered  the  retreat  of 
the  latter  with  their  infantry,  which  must,  in  consequence, 
have  suffered  enormously. 

"We  can  therefore  assume  with  absolute  certainty  that 
once  for  all  our  enemy  has  been  entirely  annihilated,  and 
if  he  can  still  bring  into  the  field  some  troops  to  oppose  us, 
this  can  only  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  a  few  divisions 
were  left  in  the  south  of  Russia,  against  the  possibility  of  an 
attack  from  Turkey.  But  these  are  composed  of  only  half- 
trained  men,  gathered  together  from  all  parts  of  Russia, 
who  are  absolutely  incapable  of  holding  the  field  against  us. 
We  have  driven  our  enemy  out  of  Galicia,  Poland,  Cour- 
land,  and  Lithuania ;  we  have  broken  through  his  lines,  and 
no  fewer  than  twelve  fortresses,  of  which  four  are  large  and 
modern,  have  been  captured  by  us ;  with  them  has  fallen  the 
last  line  of  defense  which  Russia  possessed  against  us."  x 

It  is  amusing  to  enter  into  the  details  of  this  document, 
and  to  ask  those  who  had  composed  it  how  they  could  ex- 
plain the  fact  that,  according  to  their  own  account,  they  had 

'We  have  presented  two  translations  of  this  noted  German  Gov- 
ernment announcement  so  that  the  reader  may  choose  for  himself 
between  the  spirit  in  which  it  is  read  by  a  Russian  and  by  a  German- 
American  (see  the  preceding  account).  Both  translations  are  honest, 
but  note  the  difference  of  expression. 


THE  FALL  OF  WARSAW  251 

killed  and  taken  prisoners  more  men  than  the  number  which 
they  had  indicated  themselves  as  having  opposed  them. 
Among  the  many  wonderful  things  which  the  Germans  have 
performed,  this  is  surely  one  of  the  most  remarkable  achieve- 
ments. 

We  would  also  ask  the  Germans  how  it  happened  that 
this  destroyed  Russian  army  revived  suddenly  from  the  dead, 
and  succeeded  in  preventing  the  famous  Marshal  von  Hin- 
denburg  himself  from  taking  Riga,  which  he  had  declared 
he  could  capture  whenever  he  liked.  Why,  too,  was  the 
important  fortress  of  Dunaburg — or  Dwinsk,  to  give  it  its 
Russian  name — at  Christmas,  191 5,  still  in  possession  of  the 
Czar,  in  spite  of  the  repeated  assurances  of  the  German 
military  authorities  that  its  capture  was  but  a  matter  of  a 
few  hours.  The  Prussian  Staff  is  no  longer  so  eager  to  talk 
to  us  about  the  annihilation  of  the  Russian  armies  as  it 
was  in  August,  191 5. 

It  was  fondly  expected  at  Berlin,  and  among  the  native 
German  population,  that  the  capture  of  Brest-Litovsk  would 
open  the  way  to  Southern  Russia,  and  that  Kiev  would  be 
the  next  town  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  Von  Mackensen  and 
of  Prince  Leopold  of  Bavaria,  who  suddenly  had  been  en- 
trusted with  the  leadership  of  the  German  vanguard.  In 
reality,  the  conquest  of  the  old  Lithuanian  town  had  no  such 
results,  and  proved  rather  a  source  of  embarrassment  than 
anything  else  to  the  further  successes  of  the  Kaiser's  sol- 
diers. It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  aim  of  the  Germans 
was  to  strike  terror  into  the  hearts  of  their  adversaries,  and 
that  a  good  deal  of  their  triumphs  lay  in  the  rapidity  of  their 
march  forward.  To  capture  Petrograd,  Kiev,  Odessa,  the 
territories  surrounding  the  Black  Sea,  the  Germans  would 
have  to  be  very  much  more  advanced  before  the  winter  in- 
terfered with  further  progress.  And  winter,  or  rather  au- 
tumn with  its  rains,  was  almost  at  hand.  As  far  as  Brest- 
Litovsk  the  road  had  been  relatively  easy  to  follow,  owing 
to  the  absence  of  serious  resistance  on  the  part  of  the  Rus- 
sians; but  after  Brest  matters  would  prove  very  different, 
because  this  town  lies  on  the  confines  of  the  Pripet  Marshes 
— far  more  formidable  enemies  than  an  army  of  soldiers. 


BRITAIN'S  FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES 

THE  "ANZACS"  WIN  AND  LOSE  THE   MAIN   ASSAULT  AT 

SARI   BAIR 

AUGUST  6TH-I0TH 

LORD  KITCHENER  GENERAL  HAMILTON 

ELLIS  BARTLETT      AIDE  OF  GENERAL  VON  SANDERS 

Britain  tried  for  months  to  win  the  Dardanelles  by  naval  power 
alone,  as  a  previous  section  of  our  work  has  shown.  Then  in  April  of 
1915  she  brought  land  troops  also  to  the  Dardanelles  and  gradually 
developed  a  resolute  assault,  employing  at  length  over  120,000  men. 
By  this  time,  however,  the  Turks,  previously  unready  and  uncertain 
of  their  will  to  war,  were  well  equipped  with  German  guns,  were  led 
by  German  officers,  and  were  self-confident,  eager  and  fanatically 
aroused. 

The  Dardanelles  peninsula  is  steeply  mountainous,  and  its  excel- 
lent defensive  positions  were  resolutely  held  by  a  Turkish  army 
much  exceeding  the  Britons  in  numbers.  So  that  while  the  British 
struggled  doggedly  for  months,  they  never  succeeded  in  fighting  their 
way  beyond  the  protection  of  the  ships'  guns  which  guarded  their 
landing  places.  Even  their  landings  were  sharply  opposed,  and  every 
foot  of  ground  along  the  rugged  coast  was  dearly  bought. 

The  main  British  assault  was  the  one  herein  described.  It  aimed 
to  win  the  summit  of  the  peninsula  ridge,  from  which  the  other  shore, 
within  the  mouth  of  the  Dardanelles,  could  have  been  bombarded. 
For  the  section  of  this  topmost  ridge  known  as  Sari  Bair,  the  British 
fought  for  five  days.  On  the  fourth  day,  August  9th,  they  held  the 
summit  for  a  moment,  but  lost  it  the  next  morning  before  reinforce- 
ments could  reach  the  exhausted  remnant  of  survivors. 

We  have  here  the  story  of  their  gallant  attack  as  their  Minister 
of  War,  Lord  Kitchener,  told  it  officially,  also  as  their  commanding 
general,  Sir  Ian  Hamilton,  reported  it,  and  then  as  a  noted  British 
war-correspondent  and  eye-witness  enthusiastically  described  it.  The 
Turks  unhappily  had  no  such  writers  to  glorify  their  deeds;  but  the 
resistance  seems  to  have  been  as  desperate  as  the  assault. 

Not  until  the  end  of  the  year  did  the  Britons  admit  that  their 
advance  was  hopeless  in  face  of  the  determined  Turkish  resistance 
and  the  great  natural  strength  of  the  peninsula.  Then  they  suddenly 
withdrew  their  troops,  lest  a  worse  fate  befall  them.  Their  total 
casualties    at   the   Dardanelles   exceeded   fifty   thousand. 

For  this  daring  expedition  upon  a  foreign  coast,  Britain  relied 
mainly  on  her  colonial  troops  from  Africa  and  Asia.  The  volunteers 
from  Australia  and  New  Zealand  were  gathered  here;  and  from  their 
initials   and  those  of  the  other  colonials,  their   force   was  known  as 

252 


FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES        253 

the  Anzacs.  Regular  "Ghurka"  troops  from  India  also  fought  here, 
and  some  Frenchmen,  besides  a  few  home  troops  from  the  British 
Isles.  To  Britons  the  Dardanelles  expedition  ranks  as  the  chief  disas- 
ter of  the  War,  as  also  the  occasion  of  some  of  its  most  desperate 
battles. 

BY   LORD    HERBERT    KITCHENER 

ON  the  Gallipoli  Peninsula  during  the  operations  in  June 
several  Turkish  trenches  were  captured.  Our  own  lines 
were  appreciably  advanced  and  our  positions  were  consoli- 
dated. 

Considerable  reinforcements  having  arrived,  a  surprise 
landing  on  a  large  scale  at  Suvla  Bay  was  successfully  ac- 
complished on  the  6th  of  August  without  any  serious  oppo- 
sition. 

At  the  same  time  an  attack  was  launched  by  the  Aus- 
tralian and  New  Zealand  corps  from  the  Anzac  position, 
and  a  strong  offensive  was  delivered  from  Cape  Helles  in 
the  direction  of  Krithia.  In  this  latter  action  French  troops 
played  a  prominent  part  and  showed  to  high  advantage  their 
usual  gallantry  and  fine  fighting  qualities. 

The  attack  from  Anzac,  after  a  series  of  hotly  contested 
actions,  was  carried  to  the  summit  of  Sari  Bair  and  Chunuk 
Bair,  dominating  positions  in  this  area.  The  arrival  of 
transports  and  the  disembarkation  of  troops  in  Suvla  Bay 
were  designed  to  enable  troops  to  support  this  attack.  Un- 
fortunately, however,  the  advance  from  Suvla  Bay  was  not 
developed  quickly  enough,  and  the  movement  forward  was 
brought  to  a  standstill  after  an  advance  of  about  two  and 
one-half  miles. 

The  result  was  that  the  troops  from  Anzac  were  unable 
to  retain  their  position  on  the  crest  of  the  hills,  and  after 
being  repeatedly  counter-attacked  they  were  ordered  to  with- 
draw to  positions  lower  down.  These  positions  were  ef- 
fectively consolidated,  and,  joining  with  the  line  occupied 
by  the  Suvla  Bay  force,  formed  a  connected  front  of  more 
than  twelve  miles. 

From  the  latter  position  a  further  attack  on  the  Turkish 
entrenchments  was  delivered  on  the  21st,  but  after  several 
hours  of  sharp  fighting  it  was  not  found  possible  to  gain 


254        FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES 

the  summit  of  the  hills  occupied  by  the  enemy,  and  the 
intervening  space  being  unsuitable  for  defense,  the  troops 
were  withdrawn  to  their  original  position. 

In  the  course  of  these  operations  the  gallantry  and  re- 
sourcefulness of  the  Australian  and  New  Zealand  troops 
frequently  formed  the  subject  of  eulogy  in  General  Hamil- 
ton's reports. 

It  is  not  easy  to  appreciate  at  their  full  value  the  enor- 
mous difficulties  which  attended  the  operations  in  the  Dar- 
danelles or  the  fine  temper  with  which  our  troops  met  them. 

There  is  now  abundant  evidence  of  a  process  of  de- 
moralization having  set  in  among  the  German-led,  or  rather 
German-driven  Turks,  due,  no  doubt,  to  their  extremely 
heavy  losses  and  to  the  progressive  failure  of  their  resources. 

It  is  only  fair  to  acknowledge  that,  judged  from  a  hu- 
mane point  of  view,  the  methods  of  warfare  pursued  by  the 
Turks  are  vastly  superior  to  those  which  have  disgraced 
their  German  masters. 

Throughout,  the  cooperation  of  the  fleet  was  intensely 
valuable,  and  the  concerted  action  between  the  sister  services 
was  in  every  way  in  the  highest  degree  satisfactory. 

BY  GENERAL  SIR  IAN   HAMILTON 

The  first  step  in  the  real  push — the  step  which  above  all 
others  was  to  count — was  the  night  attack  on  the  summits 
of  the  Sari  Bair  ridge.  The  crest  line  of  this  lofty  moun- 
tain range  runs  parallel  to  the  sea,  dominating  the  underfea- 
tures  contained  within  the  Anzac  position,  although  these 
fortunately  defilade  the  actual  landing-place.  From  the  main 
ridge  a  series  of  spurs  run  down  towards  the  level  beach, 
and  are  separated  from  one  another  by  deep,  jagged  gullies 
choked  up  with  dense  jungle.  Two  of  these  leading  up  to 
Chunuk  Bair  are  called  Chailak  Dere  and  Sazli  Beit  Dere; 
another  deep  ravine  runs  up  to  Koja  Chemen  Tepe  (Hill 
305),  the  topmost  peak  of  the  whole  ridge,  and  is  called  the 
Aghyl  Dere. 

It  was  our  object  to  effect  a  lodgment  along  the  crest  of 
the  high  main  ridge  with  two  columns  of  troops,  but,  seeing 
the  nature  of  the  ground  and  the  dispositions  of  the  enemy, 


FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES        255 

the  effort  had  to  be  made  by  stages.  We  were  bound,  in  fact, 
to  undertake  a  double  subsidiary  operation  before  we  could 
hope  to  launch  these  attacks  with  any  real  prospect  of  suc- 
cess. 

(1)  The  right  covering  force  was  to  seize  Table  Top, 
as  well  as  all  other  enemy  positions  commanding  the  foot- 
hills between  the  Chailak  Dere  and  the  Sazli  Beit  Dere  ra- 
vines. If  this  enterprise  succeeded  it  would  open  up  the 
ravines,  for  the  assaulting  columns,  whilst  at  the  same  time 
interposing  between  the  right  flank  of  the  left  covering 
force  and  the  enemy  holding  the  Sari  Bair  main  ridge. 

(2)  The  left  covering  force  was  to  march  northwards 
along  the  beach  to  seize  a  hill  called  Damakjelik  Bair,  some 
1,400  yards  north  of  Table  Top.  If  successful  it  would  be 
able  to  hold  out  a  hand  to  the  Ninth  Corps  as  it  landed  south 
of  Nibrunesi  Point,  whilst  at  the  same  time  protecting  the 
left  flank  of  the  left  assaulting  column  against  enemy  troops 
from  the  Anafarta  valley  during  its  climb  up  the  Aghyl  Dere 
ravine. 

(3)  The  right  assaulting  column  was  to  move  up  the 
Chailak  Dere  and  Sazli  Beit  Dere  ravines  to  the  storm  of 
the  ridge  of  Chunuk  Bair. 

(4)  The  left  assaulting  column  was  to  work  up  the  Aghyl 
Dere  and  prolong  the  line  of  the  right  assaulting  column  by 
storming  Hill  305  (Koja  Chemen  Tepe),  the  summit  of 
the  whole  range  of  hills. 

To  recapitulate,  the  two  assaulting  columns,  which  were 
to  work  up  three  ravines  to  the  storm  of  the  high  ridge, 
were  to  be  preceded  by  two  covering  columns.  One  of  these 
was  to  capture  the  enemy's  positions  commanding  the  foot- 
hills, first  to  open  the  mouths  of  the  ravines,  secondly  to 
cover  the  right  flank  of  another  covering  force  whilst  it 
marched  along  the  beach.  The  other  covering  column  was 
to  strike  far  out  to  the  north  until,  from  a  hill  called  Damaj- 
kelik  Bair,  it  could  at  the  same  time  facilitate  the  landing 
of  the  Ninth  Corps  at  Nibrunesi  Point,  and  guard  the  left 
flank  of  the  column  assaulting  Sari  Bair  from  any  forces 
of  the  enemy  which  might  be  assembled  in  the  Anafarta 
valley. 


256        FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES 

The  whole  of  this  big  attack  was  placed  under  the  com- 
mand of  Major-General  Sir  A.  J.  Godley,  General  Officer 
Commanding  New  Zealand  and  Australian  Division. 

Amongst  other  stratagems  the  Anzac  troops,  assisted  by 
H.M.S.  Colne,  had  long  and  carefully  been  educating  the 
Turks  how  they  should  lose  Old  No.  3  Post,  which  could 
hardly  have  been  rushed  by  simple  force  of  arms.  Every 
night,  exactly  at  9  p.  m.,  H.M.S.  Colne  threw  the  beams  of 
her  searchlight  onto  the  redoubt,  and  opened  fire  upon  it  for 
exactly  ten  minutes.  Then,  after  a  ten-minute  interval,  came 
a  second  illumination  and  bombardment,  commencing  al- 
ways at  9.20  and  ending  precisely  at  9.30  p.  m. 

The  idea  was  that,  after  successive  nights  of  such  prac- 
tice, the  enemy  would  get  into  the  habit  of  taking  the  search- 
light as  a  hint  to  clear  out  until  the  shelling  was  at  an  end. 
But  on  the  eventful  night  of  the  6th,  the  sound  of  their  foot- 
steps drowned  by  the  loud  cannonade,  unseen  as  they  crept 
along  in  that  darkest  shadow  which  fringes  the  searchlight's 
beam — came  the  right  covering  column.  At  9.30  the  light 
switched  off,  and  instantly  our  men  poured  out  of  the  scrub 
jungle  and  into  the  empty  redoubt.  By  1 1  p.  m.  the  whole 
series  of  surrounding  entrenchments  were  ours. 

Once  the  capture  of  Old  No.  3  Post  was  fairly  under 
way,  the  remainder  of  the  right  covering  column  carried  on 
with  their  attack  upon  Bauchop's  Hill  and  the  Chailak  Dere. 
By  10  p.  m.  the  northernmost  point,  with  its  machine  gun, 
was  captured,  and  by  1  o'clock  in  the  morning  the  whole 
of  Bauchop's  Hill,  a  maze  of  ridge  and  ravine,  everywhere 
entrenched,  was  fairly  in  our  hands. 

The  attack  along  the  Chailak  Dere  was  not  so  cleanly 
carried  out — made,  indeed,  just  about  as  ugly  a  start  as  any 
enemy  could  wish.  Pressing  eagerly  forward  through  the 
night,  the  little  column  of  stormers  found  themselves  held 
up  by  a  barbed-wire  erection  of  unexampled  height,  depth, 
and  solidity,  which  completely  closed  the  river  bed — that  is 
to  say,  the  only  practicable  entrance  to  the  ravine.  The 
entanglement  was  flanked  by  a  strongly-held  enemy  trench 
running  right  across  the  opening  of  the  Chailak  Dere.  Here 
that  splendid  body  of  men,  the  Otago  Mounted  Rifles,  lost 


FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES       257 

some  of  their  bravest  and  their  best,  but  in  the  end,  when 
things  were  beginning  to  seem  desperate,  a  passage  was 
forced  through  the  stubborn  obstacle  with  most  conspicuous 
and  cool  courage  by  Captain  Shera  and  a  party  of  New 
Zealand  Engineers,  supported  by  the  Maoris,  who  showed 
themselves  worthy  descendants  of  the  warriors  of  the  Gate 
Pah.  Thus  was  the  mouth  of  the  Chailak  Dere  opened  in 
time  to  admit  of  the  unopposed  entry  of  the  right  assaulting 
column. 

Simultaneously  the  attack  on  Table  Top  had  been 
launched  under  cover  of  a  heavy  bombardment  from  H.M.S. 
Colne.  No  general  on  peace  maneuvers  would  ask  troops 
to  attempt  so  break-neck  an  enterprise.  The  flanks  of  Table 
Top  are  so  steep  that  the  height  gives  an  impression  of  a 
mushroom  shape — of  the  summit  bulging  out  over  its  stem. 
But  just  as  faith  moves  mountains,  so  valor  can  carry  them. 
The  Turks  fought  bravely.  The  angle  of  Table  Top's  ascent 
is  recognized  in  our  regulations  as  "impracticable  for  infan- 
try." But  neither  Turks  nor  angles  of  ascent  were  destined 
to  stop  Russell  or  his  New  Zealanders  that  night.  There  are 
moments  during  battle  when  life  becomes  intensified,  when 
men  become  supermen,  when  the  impossible  becomes  simple 
— and  this  was  one  of  those  moments.  The  scarped  heights 
were  scaled,  the  plateau  was  carried  by  midnight.  With  this 
brilliant  feat  the  task  of  the  right  covering  force  was  at  an 
end.  Its  attacks  had  been  made  with  the  bayonet  and  bomb 
only ;  magazines  were  empty  by  order ;  hardly  a  rifle  shot  had 
been  fired.  Some  150  prisoners  were  captured,  as  well  as 
many  rifles  and  much  equipment,  ammunition  and  stores. 
No  words  can  do  justice  to  the  achievement  of  Brigadier- 
General  Russell  and  his  men.  There  are  exploits  which 
must  be  seen  to  be  realized. 

The  right  assaulting  column  had  entered  the  two  south- 
erly ravines — Sazli  Beit  Dere  and  Chailak  Dere — by  mid- 
night. At  1.30  a.  m.  began  a  hotly-contested  fight  for  the 
trenches  on  the  lower  part  of  Rhododendron  Spur,  whilst 
the  Chailak  Dere  column  pressed  steadily  up  the  valley 
against  the  enemy. 

The    left    covering    column,    under    Brigadier-General 

W.,  VOL.  III.— 17. 


258        FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES 

Travers,  after  marching  along  the  beach  to  No.  3  Outpost, 
resumed  its  northerly  advance  as  soon  as  the  attack  on  Bau- 
chop's  Hill  had  developed.  Once  the  Chailak  Dere  was 
cleared  the  column  moved  by  the  mouth  of  the  Aghyl  Dere, 
disregarding  the  enfilade  fire  from  sections  of  Bauchop's 
Hill  still  uncaptured.  The  rapid  success  of  this  movement 
was  largely  due  to  Lieutenant-Colonel  Gillespie,  a  very  fine 
man,  who  commanded  the  advance  guard,  consisting  of  his 
own  regiment,  the  Fourth  South  Wales  Borderers,  a  corps 
worthy  of  such  a  leader.  Every  trench  encountered  was 
instantly  rushed  by  the  Borderers,  until,  having  reached  the 
predetermined  spot,  the  whole  column  was  unhesitatingly 
launched  at  Damakjelik  Bair.  Several  Turkish  trenches 
were  captured  at  the  bayonet's  point,  and  by  1.30  a.  m.  the 
whole  of  the  hill  was  occupied,  thus  safeguarding  the  left 
rear  of  the  whole  of  the  Anzac  attack. 

Here  was  an  encouraging  sample  of  what  the  New  Army, 
under  good  auspices,  could  accomplish.  Nothing  more  try- 
ing to  inexperienced  troops  can  be  imagined  than  a  long 
night  march,  exposed  to  flanking  fire,  through  a  strange 
country,  winding  up  at  the  end  with  a  bayonet  charge  against 
a  height,  formless  and  still  in  the  starlight,  garrisoned  by 
those  specters  of  the  imagination,  worst  enemies  of  the  sol- 
dier. 

The  left  assaulting  column  crossed  the  Chailak  Dere  at 
12.30  a.  m.,  and  entered  the  Aghyl  Dere  at  the  heels  of  the 
left  covering  column.  The  surprise,  on  this  side,  was  com- 
plete. Two  Turkish  officers  were  caught  in  their  pajamas ; 
enemy  arms  and  ammunition  were  scattered  in  every  direc- 
tion. 

The  grand  attack  was  now  in  full  swing,  but  the  coun- 
try gave  new  sensations  in  cliff  climbing  even  to  officers  and 
men  who  had  graduated  over  the  goat  tracks  of  Anzac.  The 
darkness  of  the  night,  the  density  of  the  scrub,  hands  and 
knees  progress  up  the  spurs,  sheer  physical  fatigue,  ex- 
haustion of  the  spirit  caused  by  repeated  hairbreadth  escapes 
from  the  hail  of  random  bullets — all  these  combined  to  take 
the  edge  of  the  energies  of  our  troops.  At  last,  after  ad- 
vancing some  distance  up  the  Aghyl  Dere,  the  column  split 


FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES        259 

up  into  two  parts.  The  Fourth  Australian  Brigade  strug- 
gled, fighting  hard  as  they  went,  up  to  the  north  of  the 
northern  fork  of  the  Aghyl  Dere,  making  for  Hill  305  (Koja 
Chemen  Tepe).  The  Twenty-ninth  Indian  Infantry  Bri- 
gade scrambled  up  the  southern  fork  of  the  Aghyl  Dere 
and  the  spurs  north  of  it  to  the  attack  of  a  portion  of  the 
Sari  Bair  ridge  known  as  Hill  Q. 

Dawn  broke,  and  the  crest  line  was  not  yet  in  our  hands, 
although,  considering  all  things,  the  left  assaulting  column 
had  made  a  marvelous  advance.  The  Fourth  Australian  In- 
fantry Brigade  was  on  the  line  of  the  Asmak  Dere  (the 
next  ravine  north  of  the  Aghyl  Dere)  and  the  Twenty-ninth 
Indian  Infantry  Brigade  held  the  ridge  west  of  the  farm 
below  Chunuk  Bair  and  along  the  spurs  to  the  northeast. 
The  enemy  had  been  flung  back  from  ridge  to  ridge ;  an  excel- 
lent line  for  the  renewal  of  the  attack  had  been  secured,  and 
(except  for  the  exhaustion  of  the  troops)  the  auspices  were 
propitious. 

Turning  to  the  right  assaulting  column,  one  battalion, 
the  Canterbury  Infantry  Battalion,  clambered  slowly  up  the 
Sazli  Beit  Dere.  The  remainder  of  the  force,  led  by  the 
Otago  Battalion,  wound  their  way  amongst  the  pitfalls  and 
forced  their  passage  through  the  scrub  of  the  Chailak  Dere, 
where  fierce  opposition  forced  them  ere  long  to  deploy. 
Here,  too,  the  hopeless  country  was  the  main  hindrance, 
and  it  was  not  until  5.45  a.  m.  that  the  bulk  of  the  column 
joined  the  Canterbury  Battalion  on  the  lower  slopes  of 
Rhododendron  Spur.  The  whole  force  then  moved  up  the 
spur,  gaining  touch  with  the  left  assaulting  column  by  means 
of  the  Tenth  Gurkhas,  in  face  of  very  heavy  fire  and  fre- 
quent bayonet  charges.  Eventually  they  entrenched  on  the 
top  of  Rhododendron  Spur,  a  quarter  of  a  mile  short  of 
Chunuk  Bair — i.e.,  of  victory. 

At  7  a.  m.,  the  Fifth  and  Sixth  Gurkhas,  belonging  to 
the  left  assaulting  column,  had  approached  the  main  ridge 
northeast  of  Chunuk  Bair,  whilst,  on  their  left,  the  Four- 
teenth Sikhs  had  got  into  touch  with  the  Fourth  Australian 
Brigade  on  the  southern  watershed  of  the  Asmak  Dere. 
The  Fourth  Australian  Brigade  now  received  orders  to  leave 


260        FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES 

half  a  battalion  to  hold  the  spur,  and,  with  the  rest  of  its 
strength,  plus  the  Fourteenth  Sikhs,  to  assault  Hill  305 
(Koja  Chemen  Tepe).  But  by  this  time  the  enemy's  opposi- 
tion had  hardened,  and  his  reserves  were  moving  up  from 
the  direction  of  Battleship  Hill.  Artillery  support  was  asked 
for  and  given,  yet  by  9  a.  m.  the  attack  of  the  right  assault- 
ing column  on  Chunuk  Bair  was  checked,  and  any  idea  of 
a  further  advance  on  Koja  Chemen  Tepe  had  to  be,  for  the 
moment,  suspended.  The  most  that  could  be  done  was  to 
hold  fast  to  the  Asmak  Dere  watershed  whilst  attacking 
the  ridge  northeast  of  Chunuk  Bair,  an  attack  to  be  sup- 
ported by  a  fresh  assault  launched  against  Chunuk  Bair 
itself. 

At  9.30  a.  m.  tne  two  assaulting  columns  pressed  for- 
ward whilst  our  guns  pounded  the  enemy  moving  along  the 
Battleship  Hill  spurs.  But  in  spite  of  all  their  efforts  their 
increasing  exhaustion,  as  opposed  to  the  gathering  strength 
of  the  enemy's  fresh  troops,  began  to  tell — they  had  shot 
their  bolt.  So  all  day  they  clung  to  what  they  had  captured, 
and  strove  to  make  ready  for  the  night.  At  1 1  a.  m.  three 
battalions  of  the  Thirty-ninth  Infantry  Brigade  were  sent 
up  from  the  general  reserve  to  be  at  hand  when  needed,  and, 
at  the  same  hour,  one  more  battalion  of  the  reserve  was 
dispatched  to  the  First  Australian  Division  to  meet  the  drain 
caused  by  all  the  desperate  Lone  Pine  fighting. 

By  the  afternoon  the  position  of  the  two  assaulting  col- 
umns was  unchanged.  The  right  covering  force  were  in  oc- 
cupation of  Table  Top,  Old  No.  3  Post  and  Bauchop  Hill, 
which  General  Russell  had  been  ordered  to  maintain  with 
two  regiments  of  mounted  infantry. 

At  4.30  a.  m.  on  August  9th,  the  Chunuk  Bair  ridge  and 
Hill  O  were  heavily  shelled.  The  naval  guns,  all  the  guns 
on  the  left  flank,  and  as  many  as  possible  from  the  right 
flank  (whence  the  enemy's  advance  could  be  enfiladed)  took 
part  in  this  cannonade,  which  rose  to  its  climax  at  5.15 
a.  m.,  when  the  whole  ridge  seemed  a  mass  of  flame  and 
smoke,  whence  huge  clouds  of  dust  drifted  slowly  upwards 
in  strange  patterns  on  to  the  sky.    At  5.16  a.  m.  this  tre- 


FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES        261 

mendous  bombardment  was  to  be  switched  off  on  to  the  flanks 
and  reverse  slopes  of  the  heights. 

General  Baldwin's  column  had  assembled  in  the  Chailak 
Dere,  and  was  moving  up  towards  General  Johnston's  head- 
quarters. Our  plan  contemplated  the  massing  of  this  col- 
umn immediately  behind  the  trenches  held  by  the  New  Zea- 
land Infantry  Brigade.  Thence  it  was  intended  to  launch 
the  battalions  in  successive  lines,  keeping  them  as  much  as 
possible  on  the  high  ground.  Infinite  trouble  had  been  taken 
to  insure  that  the  narrow  track  should  be  kept  clear,  guides 
also  were  provided;  but  in  spite  of  all  precautions  the  dark- 
ness, the  rough  scrub-covered  country,  its  sheer  steepness, 
so  delayed  the  column  that  they  were  unable  to  take  full  ad- 
vantage of  the  configuration  of  the  ground,  and,  inclining 
to  the  left,  did  not  reach  the  line  of  the  Farm — Chunuk  Bair 
— till  5.15  a.  m.  In  plain  English,  Baldwin,  owing  to  the 
darkness  and  the  awful  country,  lost  his  way — through  no 
fault  of  his  own.  The  mischance  was  due  to  the  fact  that 
time  did  not  admit  of  the  detailed  careful  reconnoissance 
of  routes  which  is  so  essential  where  operations  are  to  be 
carried  out  by  night. 

And  now,  under  that  fine  leader,  Major  C.  G.  L.  Allan- 
son,  the  Sixth  Gurkhas  of  the  2gth  Indian  Infantry  Bri- 
gade pressed  up  the  slopes  of  Sari  Bair,  crowned  the  heights 
of  the  col  between  Chunuk  Bair  and  Hill  Q,  viewed  far  be- 
neath them  the  waters  of  the  Hellespont,  viewed  the  Asiatic 
shores  along  which  motor  transport  was  bringing  supplies 
to  the  lighters.  Not  only  did  this  battalion,  as  well  as  some 
of  the  Sixth  South  Lancashire  Regiment,  reach  the  crest, 
but  they  began  to  attack  dowi]  the  far  side  of  it,  firing  as 
they  went  at  the  fast-retreating  enemy.  But  the  fortune  of 
war  was  against  us.  At  this  supreme  moment  Baldwin's 
column  was  still  a  long  way  from  our  trenches  on  the  crest 
of  Chunuk  Bair,  whence  they  should  even  now  have  been 
sweeping  out  towards  Q  along  the  whole  ridge  of  the  moun- 
tain. And  instead  of  Baldwin's  support  came  suddenly  a 
salvo  of  heavy  shell. 

These  falling  so  unexpectedly  among  the  stormers  threw 
them  into  terrible  confusion.    The  Turkish  commander  saw 


262         FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES 

his  chance.  Instantly  his  troops  were  rallied  and  brought 
hack  in  a  counter-charge,  and  the  South  Lancashires  and 
Gurkhas,  who  had  seen  the  promised  land,  and  had  seemed 
for  a  moment  to  have  held  victory  in  their  grasp,  were  forced 
backwards  over  the  crest,  and  on  to  the  lower  slopes  whence 
they  had  first  started. 

But  where  was  the  main  attack — where  was  Baldwin? 
When  that  bold  but  unlucky  commander  found  he  could 
not  possibly  reach  our  trenches  on  the  top  of  Chunuk  Bair 
in  time  to  take  effective  part  in  the  fight,  he  deployed  for 
attack  where  he  stood — i.e.,  at  the  farm  to  the  left  of  the 
New  Zealand  Brigade's  trenches  on  Rhododendron  Spur. 
Now  his  men  were  coming  on  in  fine  style,  and,  just  as  the 
Turks  topped  the  ridge  with  shouts  of  elation,  two  com- 
panies of  the  Sixth  East  Lancashire  Regiment,  together 
with  the  Tenth  Hampshire  Regiment,  charged  up  our  side  of 
the  slope  with  the  bayonet.  They  had  gained  the  high  ground 
immediately  below  the  commanding  knoll  on  Chunuk  Bair, 
and  a  few  minutes  earlier  would  have  joined  hands  with  the 
Gurkhas  and  South  Lancashires,  and,  combined  with  them, 
would  have  carried  all  before  them.  But  the  Turks  by  this 
time  were  lining  the  whole  of  the  high  crest  in  overwhelming 
numbers. 

The  New  Army  troops  attacked  with  a  fine  audacity, 
but  they  were  flung  back  from  the  height  and  then  pressed 
still  further  down  the  slope,  until  General  Baldwin  had  to 
withdraw  his  command  to  the  vicinity  of  the  Farm,  whilst  the 
enemy,  much  encouraged,  turned  their  attention  to  the  New 
Zealand  troops  and  the  two  New  Army  battalions  of  No.  I 
Column  still  holding  the  southwest  half  of  the  main  knoll 
of  Chunuk  Bair.  Constant  attacks,  urged  with  fanatical  per- 
sistence, were  met  here  with*  a  sterner  resolution,  and  al- 
though, at  the  end  of  the  day,  our  troops  were  greatly  ex- 
hausted, they  still  kept  their  footing  on  the  summit.  And 
if  that  summit  meant  much  to  us,  it  meant  even  more  to  the 
Turks. 

At  daybreak  on  Tuesday,  August  ioth,  the  Turks  de- 
livered a  grand  attack  from  the  line  Chunuk  Bair  Hill  Q 
against  these  two  battalions,  already  weakened  in  numbers, 


FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES        263 

though  not  in  spirit,  by  previous  fighting.  First  our  men 
were  shelled  by  every  enemy  gun,  and  then,  at  5.30  a.  m., 
were  assaulted  by  a  huge  column,  consisting  of  no  less  than 
a  full  division  plus  a  regiment  of  three  battalions.  The 
North  Lancashire  men  were  simply  overwhelmed  in  their 
shallow  trenches  by  sheer  weight  of  numbers,  whilst  the 
Wilts,  who  were  caught  out  in  the  open,  were  literally  al- 
most annihilated.  The  ponderous  masses  of  the  enemy 
swept  over  the  crest,  turned  the  right  flank  of  our  line  below, 
swarmed  round  the  Hampshires  and  General  Baldwin's  col- 
umn, which  had  to  give  ground,  and  were  only  extricated 
with  great  difficulty  and  very  heavy  losses. 

BY  ELLIS  ASH  MEAD  BARTLETT 

The  great  battle,  the  greatest  fought  on  the  Gallipoli 
Peninsula,  closed  on  the  evening  of  August  10th.  Both 
armies  then  busily  engaged  in  consolidating  their  new  po- 
sitions, in  taking  stock  of  gains  and  losses,  replenishing  their 
ammunition  and  munitions,  and  reorganizing  the  divisions, 
brigades,  and  battalions  which  of  necessity  became  inter- 
mingled in  this  rugged,  mountainous  country. 

I  have  visited  the  ground  over  which  the  Anzac  corps 
advanced  in  its  desperate  efforts,  extending  over  four  con- 
secutive days,  to  reach  the  crest  of  Sari  Bair,  commanding 
the  ridge  overlooking  the  Dardanelles.  The  New  Zealand 
infantry,  the  Gurkhas,  and  some  other  battalions  almost 
reached  the  objective,  but  were  unable,  through  no  fault  of 
their  own,  to  hold  their  position.  A  battalion  of  Gurkhas 
actually  reached  the  crest  of  the  plateau,  but  the  Turks, 
taking  advantage  of  the  confusion,  counter-attacked  in  great 
force,  and  the  gallant  men  from  the  hills  were  driven  from 
the  crest  to  the  lower  spurs  beneath. 

It  was  a  bitter  disappointment  to  have  to  relinquish  the 
crest  when  it  almost  seemed  to  be  within  their  grasp  after 
so  many  months,  but  there  was  no  alternative.  The  Anzac 
corps  fought  like  lions  and  accomplished  a  feat  of  arms  in 
climbing  these  heights  almost  without  a  parallel.  All 
through,  however,  they  were  handicapped  by  the  failure  of 


264        FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES 

the  corps  to  make  good  its  positions  on  the  Anafarta  hills, 
further  north,  and  thus  check  the  enemy's  shell  fire. 

When  all  the  details  of  these  complicated  arrangements 
are  collected  and  sifted,  they  will  form  one  of  the  most  fas- 
cinating pages  of  the  history  of  the  whole  war.  It  was  a 
combat  of  giants  in  a  giant  country,  and  if  one  point  stands 
out  more  than  another  it  is  the  marvelous  hardihood,  tenacity, 
and  reckless  courage  shown  by  the  Australians  and  New 
Zealanders. 

The  main  force  debouched  from  the  Anzac  position  in 
Lone  Pine — a  position  situated  on  a  plateau  400  feet  high, 
southeast  of  the  Anzac  lines.  The  Australians  rushed  for- 
ward to  the  assault  with  the  fury  of  fanatics,  taking  little 
heed  of  the  tremendous  shrapnel  fire  and  enfilading  rifle  fire. 
On  reaching  the  trenches  the  great  difficulty  was  to  force 
a  way  in,  for  the  cover  was  so  strong  and  heavy  it  had  to  be 
torn  away  by  main  force.  Groups  of  men  effected  entrances 
at  various  points  and  jumped  in  on  top  of  the  Turks,  who 
fought  furiously,  caught  as  they  were,  in  a  trap.  Some 
surrendered,  but  the  majority  chose  to  die  fighting.  In 
every  trench  and  sap  and  dugout  desperate  hand-to-hand 
fighting  took  place,  four  lines  of  trenches  being  captured 
in  succession,  and  fresh  infantry  being  poured  in  as  the 
advancing  lines  were  thinned  by  losses. 

In  this  fighting  bombs  played  the  most  important  role, 
and  it  was  only  by  keeping  up  and  increasing  the  supply  that 
the  Australians  were  able  to  hold  the  position  after  it  had 
been  won.  The  Turks  massed  their  force,  and  for  three 
nights  and  days  made  desperate  counter-attacks,  frequently 
retaking  sections  of  the  line,  only  to  be  driven  out  again. 
In  this  extraordinary  struggle,  which  took  place  almost  un- 
der ground,  both  sides  fought  with  utter  disregard  of  life. 
The  wounded  and  dead  choked  the  trenches  almost  to  the 
top,  but  the  survivors  carried  on  the  fight  over  heaps  of 
bodies.  In  spite  of  immense  reinforcements,  with  most  de- 
termined courage  the  Australians  held  the  ground  thus  won, 
and  finally  the  Turks  wearied  of  the  struggle. 

The  trenches  were  now  merely  battered  shambles,  and 
the  task  of  removing  the  dead  and  wounded  took  days  to 


FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES        265 

accomplish.  The  bodies  of  1,000  Turks  and  Colonials  were 
removed  from  the  trenches  alone,  while  hundreds  of  others 
lie  outside.  The  total  Turkish  losses  in  this  section  alone 
are  estimated  at  5,000,  chiefly  incurred  in  furious  counter- 
attacks, among  which  each  bomb  burst  with  fearful  effect. 

The  capture  of  Lone  Pine  is  the  most  desperate  hand- 
to-hand  fight  that  has  taken  place  on  the  peninsula,  but  this 
was  but  a  diversion  and  preliminary  to  the  main  movement 
northward,  which  began  the  same  evening  under  cover  of 
darkness.  No  finer  feat  has  been  accomplished  in  the 
course  of  the  war  than  the  manner  in  which  the  troops  des- 
tined for  the  main  movement  against  Sari  Bair  Ridge 
were  deployed  for  the  attack.  Millions  of  rounds  of  am- 
munition and  thousands  of  shells  were  successfully  con- 
centrated at  advanced  posts  without  the  enemy  becoming 
aware  of  the  movement.  Neither  did  he  know  of  the 
strong  reinforcements  which  had  reached  the  Australian 
corps.  All  this  required  the  utmost  skill,  and  was  suc- 
cessfully kept  a  profound  secret. 

It  was  at  9  p.  m.,  August  6th,  when  the  force  crept  for- 
ward from  the  outposts.  For  nights  past  the  navy  had 
thrown  searchlights  on  this  and  other  lower  positions  and 
had  bombarded  them  at  frequent  intervals.  This  procedure 
was  not  departed  from  on  the  6th,  and  the  Turks  had  no 
suspicion  of  the  coming  attack.  When  the  lights  were 
switched  on  to  another  position  the  Australians  dashed  for- 
ward and  speedily  captured  the  positions  in  succession,  and 
throughout  the  night  Bauchop's  Hill  and  Big  and  Little  Ta- 
ble Tops  were  occupied. 

By  the  morning  of  the  7th  our  whole  force  was  holding 
the  front  and  slowly  moving  toward  the  main  Sari  Bair  po- 
sition in  face  of  great  difficulties,  harassed  by  the  enemy's 
snipers  and  checked  by  the  difficulties  of  the  ground  and  the 
scarcity  of  water.  It  was  decided  to  postpone  a  further  ad- 
vance until  nightfall.  The  forces  were  reorganized  into  three 
columns. 

For  the  final  assault  on  Chunuk  Bair,  which  was  timed 
to  begin  at  dawn  on  August  9th,  large  reserves  from  another 
division  were  thrown  into  the  firing  line  to  assist  the  New 


266        FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES 

Zealand  and  Indian  infantry,  and  the  men,  as  far  as  pos- 
sible, rested  through  the  day  and  the  early  part  of  the  night. 
The  advance  on  the  morning  of  the  9th  was  preceded  by 
a  heavy  bombardment  of  Chunnk  Bair  and  O  Hill  by  the 
naval  and  land  guns.  The  advance  of  No.  3  column  was 
delayed  by  the  broken  nature  of  the  ground  and  the  enemy's 
resistance. 

Meanwhile  the  Gurkhas  charged  gallantly  up  the  slope 
of  Sari  Bair,  and  actually  succeeded  in  reaching  the  heights 
on  the  neck  between  Chunuk  Bair  and  Q  Hill.  It  was 
from  here  that  they  looked  down  on  the  Dardanelles,  but 
were  unfortunately  unable  to  hold  the  position  in  face  of  vio- 
lent counter-attacks  and  heavy  shell  fire. 

During  this  time  the  Turks  counter-attacked  the  left  col- 
umn in  great  strength,  and  the  column  was  compelled  to 
withdraw  to  the  lower  slopes  of  Sari  Bair. 

Meantime  throughout  the  day  and  night  the  New  Zealan- 
ders  succeeded  in  maintaining  their  hold  on  Chunuk  Bair, 
although  the  men  were  thoroughly  exhausted.  During  the 
night  of  the  9th  the  exhausted  New  Zealanders  were  relieved 
by  two  other  regiments.  At  dawn  the  Tenth  Regiment  of 
the  Turks,  which  had  been  strongly  reenforced,  made  a 
desperate  assault  on  our  lines  from  Q  Hill  and  Chunuk  Bair. 
To  the  strength  of  a  division,  in  successive  lines,  they  hurled 
themselves,  quite  regardless  of  their  lives,  on  the  two  regi- 
ments which,  after  desperate  resistance,  were  driven  from 
their  position  by  artillery  fire  and  sheer  weight  of  numbers 
further  down  the  slopes  of  Chunuk  Bair. 

Following  up  their  success,  the  Turks  charged  right  over 
the  crest  and  endeavored  to  gain  the  great  gully  south  of 
Rhododendron  Ridge,  evidently  with  the  intention  of  forcing 
their  way  between  our  lines  and  the  Anzac  position.  But 
they  had  reckoned  without  our  artillery  and  ships'  guns. 
This  great  charge  of  four  successive  lines  of  infantry  in 
close  formation  was  plainly  visible  to  our  warships  and  all 
our  batteries  on  land.  In  this  section  the  Turks  were  caught 
in  a  trap.  The  momentum  of  their  charge  down  hill  pre- 
vented them  from  recoiling  in  time,  and  they  were  swept 


FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES        267 

away  by  hundreds  in  a  terrific  storm  of  high  explosive 
shrapnel,  and  common  shells  from  the  ships'  guns  and  our 
howitzers  and  field  pieces. 

As  the  shells  from  the  ships  exploded,  huge  chunks  of 
soil  were  thrown  into  the  air,  amid  which  you  saw  humar 
bodies  hurled  aloft  and  then  chucked  to  earth  or  throwr 
bodily  into  deep  ravines.  But  even  this  concentrated  artil- 
lery fire  might  not  have  checked  the  Turkish  advance,  unless 
it  had  been  assisted  by  the  concentrated  fire  of  ten  machine 
guns  at  short  range.  For  half  an  hour  they  maintained  a 
rapid  fire  until  the  guns  smoked  with  heat. 

During  the  whole  of  this  time  the  Turks  were  pouring 
across  the  front  in  dense  columns,  attempting  to  attack  our 
men.  Hardly  a  Turk  got  back  to  the  hill.  Their  lines  got 
mixed  up  in  a  wedge  as  those  in  front  tried  to  retire  while 
others  pressed  them  from  the  rear.  Some  fled  back  over 
the  crest,  seeking  to  regain  their  trenches;  others  dashed 
downward  to  the  ravines.  In  a  few  minutes  the  entire  di- 
vision had  been  broken  up  and  the  survivors  scattered  every- 
where. 

If  they  succeeded  in  driving  us  from  the  crest  of  Chunuk 
Bair,  the  Turks  paid  a  terrible  price  for  their  success.  Thus 
closed,  amid  these  bloodstained  hills,  the  most  ferocious  and 
sustained  "soldiers'  battle"  since  Inkerman. 

BY  AN   OFFICER  OF  THE  GERMAN   STAFF 

This  Narrative  Received  the  Direct  Approval  of  the  German  General 
in  Command,  Marshal  Liman  von  Sanders 

Toward  4  p.  m.  on  August  6th  artillery  preparation  was 
begun  against  our  positions,  with  a  stupendous  expenditure 
of  ammunition.  Days  before,  the  enemy,  after  fair  fighting-, 
had  set  up  great  tents  at  this  point,  marking  them  each  with 
the  sign  of  the  Red  Cross ;  and  for  this  reason  they  had  not 
been  fired  upon.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  these  tents 
were  not  intended  to  serve  as  shelters  for  the  wounded.  Un- 
der cover  of  night,  the  English  set  up  heavy  howitzers  at 
this  point, — only  thus  was  it  possible  for  them  to  undertake 


268        FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES 

a  surprise  attack  here.1  After  drumfire  of  an  hour  and  a 
half,  4,000  Britons  attacked  the  strongly  entrenched  posi- 
tions of  the  defenders.  The  situation  grew  critical.  Indeed, 
the  enemy's  plan  of  compelling  the  Turks  to  call  up  reserves 
and  thus  to  divert  troops  succeeded.  Essad  Pasha  could  do 
nothing  but  call  up  reinforcements  from  all  quarters.  Mar- 
shal von  Sanders  offered  the  services  of  Kannengiesser's 
division,  which  in  the  interval  had  arrived  from  the  southern 
front.  But  it  was  soon  evident  that  their  active  participation 
was  unnecessary,  although  for  the  time  being  the  troops 
were  held  at  this  point  against  possible  eventualities. 

By  means  of  sham  maneuvers  at  various  points  of  attack, 
though  "sham"  is  scarcely  the  word,  since  extraordinarily 
bloody  battles  developed  both  at  the  south  group  and  at 
Kanly  Sirt,  the  British  general,  Hamilton,  believed  that  he 
had  sufficiently  committed  his  opponent ;  and  so,  on  the  eve- 
ning of  August  6th,  he  inaugurated  his  grandiose  plan,  which 
was  to  lay  open  the  Dardanelles  for  the  Allies  from  Kodja 
Djemendagh  on,  and  at  the  same  time  to  cut  off  the  rear- 
ward communications  of  the  Turkish  army.  Had  this  opera- 
tion been  successful,  the  way  to  Constantinople  would  have 
been  open;  hard-pressed  Russia  could  have  received  the 
longed-for  help  by  way  of  the  Black  Sea ;  the  Turkish  army 
on  Gallipoli  would  have  been  put  in  an  extremely  dangerous 
situation,  and  the  name  of  Sir  Ian  Hamilton  would  have  been 
inscribed  on  the  roster  of  the  great  strategists  of  the  world. 

Any  one  who  observed  the  ensuing  conflicts  will  unhesi- 
tatingly give  the  highest  praise  to  the  death-defying  courage 
of  the  troops  who  landed  on  Suvla  Bay.  The  "Anzacs,"  as  the 
English  newspapers  called  the  Australia-New  Zealand  Army 

1  This  is  typical  of  the  way  in  which  German  writers  made  such 
charges,  loosely,  casually,  and  without  offering  any  evidence,  or  ap- 
parently making  any  investigation.  Their  method  is  not  that  of  honest 
men  disgusted  at  an  opponent's  act  of  almost  unbelievable  treachery, 
and  determined  to  prove  this  evil  deed  despite  the  amazed  doubt  of 
their  hearers.  It  is  the  shallow  method  of  those  who  seek  only  to  in- 
crease the  anger  of  an  audience  already  so  prejudiced  that  they  will 
believe  anything  on  the  strength  of  a  loose  assertion.  The  high  repute 
of  the  Anzac  fighters  makes  the  accusation  as  unbelievable  in  matter 
as  it  is  slovenly  of  manner. 


FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES        269 

Corps,  fought  like  lions.  If  the  brilliantly  planned  operation 
failed,  it  was  because  Sir  Ian  Hamilton  met  in  the  commander 
of  the  Fifth  Turkish  Army  2  a  master  who  in  a  few  moves 
answered  "check"  with  "checkmate." 

The  night  of  the  6th  of  August  settled  down  pitch  black. 
All  day  the  rain  had  fallen  unceasingly.  Not  a  ray  from 
the  moon,  not  a  sparkle  from  the  stars,  could  penetrate  the 
thick  canopy  of  clouds.  It  was  so  dark  that  a  man  could 
scarcely  see  his  hand  before  his  face.  The  great  transports 
entered  Suvla  Bay  with  all  lights  out.  Not  even  their  out- 
lines were  visible.  Phosphorescence  gleamed  in  the  foam 
of  the  waves  breaking  on  the  beach.  But  beyond  stretched 
the  eerie  blankness  of  the  night.  Everything  that  happened 
out  there  was  as  if  behind  a  veil.  Without  a  word,  without  a 
sound,  the  troops  entered  the  lighters  brought  for  the  pur- 
pose. On  the  northern  and  southern  promontories  and  op- 
posite Tuslagol  Australians  and  New  Zealanders  landed  with 
noiseless  footsteps. 

The  Turkish  outposts  before  the  main  positions  on  the 
rim  of  the  heights  which  on  the  west  overlook  the  lowland 
of  Tuslagol  drew  back  in  the  face  of  overwhelming  numbers, 
and  immediately  a  field  telephone  informed  the  army  high 
command  of  the  landing  of  strong  forces.  Liman  Pasha 
without  delay  sent  an  alarm  to  the  two  divisions  stationed  in 
the  northeastern  part  of  the  peninsula  for  the  protection  of 
the  Gulf  of  Saros,  and  started  them  for  Anaforta  by  forced 
marches.  At  the  same  time  the  division  of  Djemil  Bey,  part 
of  the  right  wing  of  the  southern  troops,  was  started  toward 
Kodja  Djemendagh.  The  enemy  on  Suvla  Bay  at  once  made 
bridgeheads  of  Softa  and  Laletepe  to  assure  the  safety  of 
further  landings. 

Another  part  of  the  Anzac  corps  landed  south  of  Suvla 
Bay  at  the  mouth  of  the  Asmakdere.  At  the  same  time  the 
Thirteenth  Kitchener  Division  and  a  mixed  division  made 
up  of  New  Zealanders  and  Australians,  which  had  made  use 
of  the  landing  place  at  Ari  Burun,  marched  northward, 
hugging  the  coast.     Then  turning  eastward,  they  followed 

2  Marshal  Liman  von  Sanders. 


270        FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES 

the  dry  river  beds  of  the  Saslidere  and  the  Agylldere  and  a 
ravine  running  parallel  to  and  between  the  two  valleys  toward 
Kodja  Djemendagh.  On  the  morning  of  the  7th  two  new 
divisions  which  had  landed  on  Suvls  Bay  in  the  night  marched 
to  the  south  to  join  those  which  had  landed  at  the  Asmak- 
dere. 

During  the  night  of  the  7th-8th  Colonel  Kannengiesser 
received  orders  to  march  against  the  right  wing  of  the  north- 
ern group.  As  the  dawn  began  to  break,  he  reached  with 
two  regiments  Djonk  Bahir,  a  southeasterly  spur  of  Kodja 
Djemendagh,  just  as  the  enemy,  after  climbing  to  these 
heights  from  the  sea  under  cover  of  darkness,  was  making 
preparations  to  dig  in  there.  The  order  to  attack  was  quickly 
given.  Some  rapid  fire  salvos  were  discharged  at  the  An- 
zacs,  busy  at  the  work  of  entrenching;  then  the  colonel  him- 
self led  his  troops  in  an  assault  on  the  surprised  foe. 

The  Anzacs  were  about  to  abandon  the  heights  in  wild 
flight  when  the  colonel,  pressing  forward  far  in  advance  of 
his  men,  was  struck  in  the  breast  by  a  rifle  bullet  and  fell 
unconscious.  At  the  sight  the  ranks  of  the  attackers  wavered. 
Their  dearly  loved  German  leader  might  have  led  them  to 
certain  victory,  but-now  they  hesitated,  and  though  they  had 
already  won  much  ground,  were  inclined  to  retire  slowly, 
when  Djemil  Bey  appeared  with  the  Fourth  Division.  He 
took  in  the  situation  at  once,  assumed  command  of  the  troops 
and  infused  in  them  the  spirit  to  carry  forward  their  invin- 
cible attack.  Everywhere  the  British  were  thrown  from  the 
heights.  Not  till  halfway  down  the  slope  could  they  make 
a  stand,  and  under  the  protection  of  their  ships'  guns  dig  in. 

On  the  same  morning  a  regiment  of  the  enemy  moved 
from  the  landing  place  at  Softatepe,  the  northern  promon- 
tory of  Suvla  Bay,  toward  Kiretschtepe  and  attacked  a  bat- 
talion of  Gallipoli  gendarmerie.  These  were  oldish  men — 
the  beards  of  some  were  white — recruited  entirely  from  the 
peninsula.  But  they  were  defending  their  homes,  and  the 
greater  strength  of  the  enemy  was  unable  to  drive  the  gal- 
lant fellows  from  their  carefully  prepared  positions.  An- 
other body  of  the  enemy  had  proceeded  through  Tuslagol, 
now  almost  completely  dried  up,  and  from  Laletepe  against 


FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES        271 

Mestamtepe.  At  this  point  the  attackers  succeeded  in  holding 
their  positions. 

During  the  night  of  the  7th-8th  still  other  troops  in  con- 
siderable numbers  disembarked  on  Suvla  Bay.  The  lack  of 
heavy  artillery  and  the  shortage  of  ammunition  were  now 
seriously  felt  by  the  Turks.  Had  conditions  in  this  respect 
been  different,  the  enemy's  transport  and  battle  fleet,  which 
was  now  calmly  anchored  between  the  two  tongues  of  land 
forming  the  bay,  protected  against  U-boat  attack  by  a  steel 
net  stretched  between  the  two  headlands,  could  not  have 
stayed  there,  and  the  landing  of  troops  would  have  been  very 
much  more  difficult. 

Gradually,  on  the  morning  of  the  8th,  the  pale  gray  of 
the  ships'  hulls  was  detached  from  the  fog  wreaths  which 
still  veiled  the  sea.  Lightning  flashed  from  the  muzzles  of 
cannon.  The  roar  came  up  like  thunder  from  the  sea.  End- 
less seconds  passed.  Then,  from  the  slopes  of  Kodja  Djemen- 
dagh,  there  was  the  noise  of  the  Anzac  guns  that  had  been 
landed  there;  a  shorter  sound  wave  struck  the  ear.  And 
now  broke  loose  a  storm  of  iron  and  lead.  The  entire  fleet 
off  shore  directed  its  fire  against  the  summit  of  Kodja  Dje- 
mendagh,  which  soon  looked  precisely  like  an  active  volcano. 
The  whole  mountain  cone  was  enveloped  in  a  cloud  of  many- 
colored  smoke  and  dust.  A  terrible  and  yet  a  fascinating- 
sight!     Still  nothing  stirred  in  the  Turkish  lines. 

Just  as  the  hellish  concert  reached  its  climax,  the  Turkish 
howitzers,  which  during  the  night,  through  prodigious  ex- 
ertions, had  been  placed  on  the  heights  north  and  south  of 
Anafarta,  joined  in.  Only  a  single  shot  fell  here  and  there. 
On  our  side  the  costly  ammunition  had  to  be  most  carefully 
husbanded.  Very  cleverly  the  enemy  had  set  up  on  the  land- 
ing places  field  hospitals,  from  which  fluttered,  in  plain  view 
from  a  great  distance,  the  sign  of  the  Red  Cross.  This,  ac- 
cording to  army  orders,  must  be  rigorously  respected. 

The  Marshal  mounted  his  horse.  His  presence  was 
needed.  Up  on  Kodja  Djemendagh  two  divisions  were  sta- 
tioned under  the  command  of  Djemil  Bey.  He  had  placed 
his  men  so  skillfully  in  the  numerous  fissures,  ravines,  and 
declivities  of  the  mountain  that  they  were  enduring  fairly 


272         FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES 

well  the  terrific  fire  from  the  ships'  guns.  Signals  flashed 
among  the  fleet,  and  suddenly,  at  one  stroke,  every  cannon 
stopped  firing.  This  was  the  moment  Djemil  Bey  was  wait- 
ing for.  Quickly  he  hurried  to  the  observer's  stand  of  the 
mountain  artillery,  which  high  above  on  Jonkbahir  was  sta- 
tioned in  the  front  line.  His  surmise  was  right.  There  they 
came,  the  Anzacs,  ascending  the  heights  in  broad  storming 
columns.  In  good  order  so  far  as  the  difficulty  of  the  ground 
permitted.  Even  the  new  Kitchener  troops  had  learned  much 
during  their  short  period  of  training. 

The  artillery  commander,  trembling  with  excitement  and 
eagerness  for  the  fray,  looked  questioningly  but  vainly  at 
Djemil  Bey,  whose  orders  had  so  far  condemned  him  to  in- 
activity. Further  waiting  was  exacted  by  that  man  of  iron 
nerves.  Now  the  attackers*,  climbing  laboriously,  were  crowd- 
ing closely  together  in  the  ravines  and  gullies,  two  thou- 
sand meters  away;  they  drew  nearer — to  fifteen  hundred 
meters,  to  a  thousand.  White  stones  visible  only  to  the 
defenders,  the  other  side  being  painted  dark,  marked  for  the 
Turks  the  exact  distances  from  their  lines.  At  this  mo- 
ment the  mountain  artillery  started  its  salvos;  the  machine 
guns  began  to  crackle  and  snap;  from  the  lines  of  riflemen 
a  hail  of  bullets  sped  forth  against  the  Anzacs.  It  was  a 
scene  of  Death,  of  raging,  frightful  Death,  mowing  down  all. 
Not  a  man  of  those  that  peopled  the  slope  survived. 

New  troops  stormed  forward  in  dense  masses — a  broad 
front  was  impossible  over  the  broken  terrain  of  the  ascent — 
led  by  athletic  young  officers  overflowing  with  enthusiasm. 
Many  of  them  perhaps  had  but  recently  left  the  benches  of 
the  colleges  of  Cambridge,  Oxford,  London,  or  Edinburgh. 
The  foremost  ranks  faltered  before  the  heaped-up  bodies  of 
fallen  comrades.  Too  late!  Struck  by  the  ceaseless  hail 
of  iron,  hundreds  rolled  upon  the  ground.  Those  who  fol- 
lowed, as  soon  as  they  came  within  range  of  the  Turkish  ar- 
tillery and  machine  guns,  suffered  the  same  fate.  Fearful 
confusion  resulted.  The  instinct  for  self-preservation  gained 
the  upper  hand.  First  single  individuals,  then  small  groups, 
and  finally  great  masses  of  the  survivors,  turned  back.  It 
was  the  signal  for  the  Turkish  lines  everywhere  to  advance, 


FAILURE  AT  THE  DARDANELLES        273 

With  bayonet  and  rifle  stock  the  Ottoman  horde  stormed 
down  the  slope.  The  Anzacs  suffered  terrible  losses.  Only  a 
few  remained  alive.  Hundreds  of  unwounded  prisoners  fell 
into  the  hands  of  the  Turks. 

That  night  Liman  Pasha  assigned  Mustafa  Kemal,  who 
had  in  many  ways  distinguished  himself  in  the  recent  battles, 
to  the  command  of  the  troops  in  the  Anafarta  sector.  The 
general  Turkish  attack  began  on  the  morning  of  August 
9th,  and  halted  any  new  Anzac  attempt  to  advance. 

The  enemy  realized  this  only  too  soon,  and  changed  his 
tactics.  His  next  move  was  to  attack  on  the  line  Kiretsch- 
tepe-Asmakdere.  The  only  high  ground  he  was  able  to  hold 
here  was  the  hill  of  Mestantepe,  and  that  was  hotly  con- 
tested. From  the  greater  height  of  Ismailtepe  Colonel  Salah- 
heddin  threw  a  division  against  Mestantepe  in  a  wild  forward 
rush.  The  Turks  were  prevented  from  taking  the  whole 
hill  by  the  numerous  machine  guns  which  had  been  set  up 
there  and  by  the  guns  of  the  fleet,  but  they  pressed  the  en- 
emy back  a  considerable  distance.  The  division  pushed  for- 
ward south  of  Asmakdere  and  pressed  the  enemy  back  close 
to  the  coast;  the  same  thing  occurred  north  of  Mestantepe. 
By  noon  of  the  9th  the  English  everywhere  except  on  Me- 
stantepe had  been  crowded  back  to  the  coast. 

The  center  of  the  fighting  in  the  days  that  followed  was 
at  Kiretschtepe.  At  that  point  the  battalion  of  Gallipoli 
gendarmerie,  led  by  the  brave  Captain  Kadri  Bey,  was  hold- 
ing back  constantly  increasing  superior  forces.  The  rein- 
forcements ordered  up  by  Liman  Pasha  from  the  Asiatic 
side  arrived  on  the  evening  of  the  9th.  On  the  morning  of 
the  10th  Mustafa  Kemal  placed  himself  at  the  head  of  fresh 
troops  and  once  more  attacked  the  Anzacs  west  of  Kodja 
Djemendagh.  A  bullet  went  through  his  coat  and  penetrated 
his  watch,  in  which  it  became  imbedded.  When  shortly  after- 
wards Liman  Pasha  arrived  on  the  scene,  Kemal  Bey  handed 
him  the  watch  for  a  souvenir.  The  Marshal  accepted  the 
gift  r.nd  responded  by  presenting  to  the  Bey  his  own  valuable 
watch.  All  through  that  day  the  English  brought  up  re- 
enforcements.  But  to  no  avail!  They  had  been  decisively 
beaten  back ;  and  no  later  effort  changed  the  situation. 

w.,  VOL.  III.— 18. 


THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA 

DISCLOSURE  OF  THE  CRIMINAL  METHODS  EMPLOYED  TO 
WEAKEN   AND   TERRORIZE   NEUTRALS 

SEPTEMBER    9TH 

SECRETARY  LANSING  AMBASSADOR  DUMBA 

PROFESSOR  E.  E.  SPERRY 

This  volume  has  already  been  called  on  to  describe  the  growing 
antagonism  against  Germany  roused  in  America  by  the  unjustified  Ger- 
man protests  and  the  submarine  attacks.  For  a  long  time  Germany  was 
doing  worse  deeds  than  these.  She  was,  under  the  mask  of  diplomatic 
friendship,  conducting  a  secret  war  upon  the  United  States.  Her 
agents  seem  without  exception  to  have  adopted  that  crafty  doctrine 
that  all  falsity  was  righteous  in  Germany's  cause.  Even  her  highest 
representatives  here  broke  their  pledged  honor  at  every  point,  and 
hired  agents  as  tricky  as  themselves  to  perpetrate  every  form  of 
crime,  not  hesitating  even  at  wholesale  murder.  The  aim  of  this 
carnival  of  evil  was  threefold.  First,  it  sought  to  prevent  trade  be- 
tween the  United  States  and  the  Allies.  Second,  it  sought  to  give  the 
United  States  authorities  so  much  trouble  at  home,  whether  with 
strikers,  with  disasters,  with  Mexico  or  with  Japan,  that  they  would 
have  no  heart  for  a  vigorous  opposition  to  Germany  abroad.  Third, 
it  sought  to  manufacture  a  public  sentiment  favorable  to  German 
designs.  It  sought  friends  not  through  noble  actions  but  through 
bribery,  threat  or  deception. 

This  secret  warfare  came  first  into  the  open  on  September  9,  1915, 
when  our  Government  having  caught  the  Austrian  Ambassador,  Dr. 
Constantin  Theodor  Dumba,  in  a  particularly  flagrant  misuse  of  his 
official  privileges,  Secretary  Lansing  sent  the  following  note,  formally 
demanding  the  Ambassador's  recall.  The  Ambassador's  official  defense 
is  also  given.  The  Archibald  there  mentioned  was  afterward  proved 
to  be  a  paid  employee  of  the  German  Embassy,  hired  as  a  propaganda 
writer.  He  used  his  American  citizenship  and  his  American  passport 
rights  to  enable  him  to  act  as  a  secret  service  agent  of  the  Teuton 
Governments. 

Dr.  Dumba  devotes  himself  to  explaining  that  the  letters  secretly 
intrusted  to  Archibald  were  harmless — which  of  course  does  not  touch 
upon  the  fact  that  he  was  wrong  to  carry  any  letters  whatever. 
Whether  Dumba's  proposals  were  really  as  harmless  as  he  says  can 
best  be  gathered  from  Professor  Sperry's  article,  which  follows. 

As  the  official  publicist  for  our  Government,  Dr.  Sperry  briefly  re- 
views the  entire  field  of  unlawful  Teutonic  actions  in  America,  so 
far  as  these  were  known  when  we  were  driven  into  the  War.  Our 
Secret  Service  proved  really  far  more  efficient  than  that  of  the  Ger- 

274 


THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA       275 

mans.  Their  agents  were  checkmated  at  almost  every  point,  by  using 
only  the  ordinary  processes  of  civil  law  to  convict  them  of  their 
crimes.  Dr.  Dumba  could  not  be  thus  convicted  because  of  his  diplo- 
matic immunity.  As  for  the  German  Ambassador,  Bernstorff,  the 
American  Government  apparently  figured  that  a  rogue  whom  they  knew 
so  well  was  better  in  his  position  than  a  new  one  who  might  prove 
wilier. 

C.  F.  H. 

BY   SECRETARY   LANSING 
His    Official    Note    to    the    Austrian    Government,    September   9,    1915 

MR.  CONSTANTIN  DUMBA,  the  Austro-Hungarian 
Ambassador  at  Washington,  has  admitted  that  he  pro- 
posed to  his  Government  plans  to  instigate  strikes  in  Amer- 
ican manufacturing  plants  engaged  in  the  production  of 
munitions  of  war.  The  information  reached  this  Govern- 
ment through  a  copy  of  a  letter  of  the  Ambassador  to  his 
Government.  The  bearer  was  an  American  citizen  named 
Archibald,  who  was  traveling  under  an  American  passport. 
The  Ambassador  has  admitted  that  he  employed  Archibald 
to  bear  official  dispatches  from  him  to  his  Government. 

By  reason  of  the  admitted  purpose  and  intent  of  Mr. 
Dumba  to  conspire  to  cripple  legitimate  industries  of  the 
people  of  the  United  States  and  to  interrupt  their  legitimate 
trade  and  by  reason  of  the  flagrant  violation  of  diplomatic 
propriety  in  employing  an  American  citizen  protected  by  an 
American  passport  as  a  secret  bearer  of  official  dispatches 
through  the  lines  of  the  enemy  of  Austria-Hungary,  the 
President  directs  me  to  inform  your  Excellency  that  Mr. 
Dumba  is  no  longer  acceptable  to  the  Government  of  the 
United  States  as  the  Ambassador  of  his  Imperial  Majesty  at 
Washington. 

Believing  that  the  Imperial  and  Royal  Government  will 
realize  that  the  Government  of  the  United  States  has  no  al- 
ternative but  to  request  the  recall  of  Mr.  Dumba  on  account 
of  his  improper  conduct,  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  expresses  its  deep  regret  that  this  course  has  become 
necessary  and  assures  the  Imperial  and  Royal  Government 
that  it  sincerely  desires  to  continue  the  cordial  and  friendly 
relations  which  exist  between  the  United  States  and  Aus- 
tria-Hungary. 


276      THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA 

BY   AMBASSADOR   DUMBA 
His  Official   Statement 

There  was  nothing  in  the  dispatches  which  Archibald 
carried  that  cannot  be  satisfactorily  explained.  The  pro- 
posals regarding  embarrassing  steel  works  were  nothing 
more  than  a  very  open  and  perfectly  proper  method  to  be 
taken  to  bring  before  men  of  our  races  employed  in  the  big 
steel  works  the  fact  that  they  were  engaged  in  enterprises 
unfriendly  to  their  fatherland,  and  that  the  Imperial  Gov- 
ernment would  hold  the  workers  in  munition  plants  where 
contracts  are  being  filled  for  the  Allies  as  being  guilty  of 
a  serious  crime  against  their  country,  something  that  would 
be  punishable  by  penal  servitude  should  they  return  to  their 
own  country. 

There  are  thousands  of  workingmen  in  the  big  steel  in- 
dustries, natives  of  Bohemia,  Moravia,  Carniola,  Galicia, 
Dalmatia,  Croatia,  Slavonia,  and  other  peoples  of  the  races 
from  Austria-Hungary,  who  are  uneducated  and  who  do 
not  understand  that  they  are  engaged  in  a  work  against 
their  own  country.  In  order  to  bring  this  before  them  I 
have  subsidized  many  newspapers  published  in  the  lan- 
guages and  dialects  of  the  divisions  mentioned,  attempting 
in  this  way  to  bring  the  felonious  occupation  to  their  atten- 
tion. But  this  has  been  difficult.  In  some  of  the  great  steel 
plants  of  Pennsylvania  these  uneducated  men  of  my  coun- 
try are  nothing  more  or  less  than  slaves.  They  are  even 
being  worked  twelve  hours  a  day,  and  herded  in  stockades. 
It  is  difficult  to  get  at  these  workers  except  en  masse,  and 
a  peaceful  walkout  of  these  workingmen  would  be  of  the 
greatest  advantage  to  my  Government,  as  well  as  an  in- 
demnity to  themselves. 

It  is  my  duty  as  the  representative  of  Austria-Hungary 
to  make  known  these  facts  to  the  Imperial  Government,  and 
in  so  doing  I  am  performing  a  service  for  which  I  was  sent 
to  this  country.  The  dispatches  or  letters  carried  by  Archi- 
bald contained  nothing  more  than  a  proposal  that  we  attempt 
to  call  out  the  workmen  of  our  own  country  from  these 
steel  and  munition  works  and  provide  for  them  other  em- 


THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA      277 

ployment.  To  do  so  money  would  be  necessary  and  a  labor 
employment  bureau  would  have  to  be  organized.  This  is 
one  of  the  things  I  shall  bring  before  the  Secretary  of  Labor 
in  Washington  this  week.  This  seems  to  me  to  be  a  legiti- 
mate and  entirely  satisfactory  means  of  preventing  the 
making  and  shipping  of  war  materials  to  our  enemies. 

My  letter  which  Mr.  Archibald  carried  does  not  con- 
tradict anything  that  Count  von  Bernstorff  has  said,  for 
his  people  and  the  great  bulk  of  those  who  make  up  our 
Austro-Hungarian  races  are  entirely  different  types.  The 
greater  part  of  German  workmen  of  all  ranks  are  educated. 
They  read  and  discuss  matters  and  can  be  easily  reached. 
Not  so  with  the  many  races  and  the  great  ignorant  mass 
of  our  peoples.  Promises  of  better  wages  and  easier  em- 
ployment must  be  made  and  their  position  in  aiding  the  en- 
emy must  be  brought  home  to  them.  Where  there  are  a 
hundred  German-born  men  working  in  the  factories  there 
are  thousands  of  Austrians.  Remedies  for  reaching  these 
races  must  differ,  and  there  is  no  conspiracy  in  an  open  at- 
tempt to  call  out  the  Austrian  citizens  at  Bethlehem  or  else- 
where. Such  a  proposal  as  this  was  the  letter  of  which  it 
is  said  a  photographic  copy  was  made  and  its  contents  cabled 
to  the  State  Department  at  Washington. 

BY   PROF.    E.    E.    SPERRY  1 

The  President  of  the  United  States,  in  his  address  to 
Congress  asking  for  a  declaration  of  war,  said  of  the  Ger- 
man Government :  "One  of  the  things  that  has  served  to 
convince  us  that  the  Prussian  autocracy  was  not  and  could 
never  be  our  friend  is  that  from  the  very  outset  of  the  pres- 
ent war  it  has  filled  our  unsuspecting  communities,  and  even 
our  offices  of  Government,  with  spies  and  set  criminal  in- 
trigues everywhere  afoot  against  our  national  unity  of  coun- 
sel, our  peace  within  and  without,  our  industries  and  our 
commerce.  Indeed,  it  is  now  evident  that  its  spies  were 
here  even  before  the  war  began;  and  it  is  unhappily  not  a 
matter  of  conjecture,  but  a  fact  proved  in  our  courts  of 

1  Condensed  from  the  U.  S.  Government's  official  publication. 


278       THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA 

justice,  that  the  intrigues  which  have  more  than  once  come 
perilously  near  to  disturbing  the  peace  and  dislocating  the 
industries  of  the  country  have  been  carried  on  at  the  in- 
stigation, with  the  support,  and  even  under  the  personal 
direction  of  official  agents  of  the  Imperial  Government  ac- 
credited to  the  Government  of  the  United  States." 

The  information  on  which  the  President  based  his  state- 
ments was  drawn  from  a  varied  and  miscellaneous  body  of 
documentary  material.  This  includes  first  of  all  a  great 
number  of  such  papers  and  records  as  are  produced  in  the 
usual  course  of  business  transactions.  Among  them  are 
telegrams  from  the  German  Government  to  its  diplomatic 
representatives  in  the  United  States;  letters  and  telegrams 
exchanged  by  them  with  their  hired  agents  here ;  records  of 
financial  dealings,  as  checks,  receipts,  bank  books,  deposit 
slips,  orders  to  banks  that  money  be  paid  and  acknowledg- 
ments thereof;  reports  of  subordinates  to  superiors;  hotel 
registers  and  lists  of  telephone  calls. 

Another  rich  mine  of  information  concerning  the  machi- 
nations of  Germany  in  the  United  States  has  resulted  from 
the  legal  prosecution  of  certain  of  her  agents  here  for  crim- 
inal acts.  This  evidence  includes  confessions  by  accused  per- 
sons and  their  confederates  to  United  States  officials,  ex- 
aminations before  Government  officials,  and  testimony  of- 
fered in  the  courts  of  law. 

From  the  evidence  contained  in  such  sources  of  informa- 
tion as  these  there  can  be  no  appeal.  It  is  conclusive  and 
unimpeachable.  And  it  is  the  only  kind  of  evidence  on 
which  are  based  the  statements  in  this  pamphlet. 

The  commander-in-chief  of  Germany's  agents  here  was 
Count  Johann  von  Bernstorff,  Imperial  German  Ambassa- 
dor to  the  United  States.  His  coadjutor  and  able  adviser 
during  some  months  was  Constantin  Theodor  Dumba,  the 
Austro-Hungarian  Ambassador.  His  chief  lieutenants  in 
the  execution  of  his  plans  were  Captain  Franz  von  Papen, 
military  attache  of  the  German  Embassy,  Captain  Karl  Boy- 
Ed,  its  naval  attache,  Dr.  Heinrich  F.  Albert,  commercial 
attache,  and  Wolf  von  Igel,  who  also  had  diplomatic  status. 
Assisting  this  central  group  were  many  of  the  consuls  of 


THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA      279 

Germany  and  Austria-Hungary  scattered  over  the  United 
States,  and  beneath  them  were  the  rank  and  file  of  obscure 
servitors  who  carried  out  the  plans  conceived  by  the  General 
Staff  in  Berlin  and  sent  to  the  German  Ambassador. 

Franz  von  Rintelen,  although  a  leader  in  similar  enter- 
prises, was  not  a  member  of  this  band  nor  responsible  to 
Ambassador  von  Bernstorff.  He  had  a  separate  supply  of 
funds  and  operated  as  a  free  lance. 

Interference  with  Industry  2 

One  chief  purpose  of  the  German  and  Austrian  Ambas- 
sadors was  to  prevent  the  export  from  the  United  States  of 
military  supplies.  Since  Germany's  shipping  had  been  driven 
from  the  seas  early  in  the  war,  her  overwhelming  superiority 
in  accumulated  munitions  and  in  power  to  manufacture 
was  certain  to  be  lost  as  the  passing  months  brought  to  the 
Entente  states  an  increasing  volume  of  American  products. 

To  strike  at  the  very  source  of  these  supplies,  the  Ameri- 
can factory,  was  obviously  an  effective  means  to  prevent 
their  export,  and  in  a  letter  to  Baron  Burian,  Foreign  Minis- 
ter of  Austria-Hungary,  Ambassador  Dumba  writes  con- 
cerning this  design :     "Besides,  a  private  German  employ- 

2  The  French  papers  have  published  certain  secret  circulars  from  the 
German  General  Headquarters,  among  which  the  following  (translated 
from  the  French  text)  occurs : 

"Circular  of  November  2,  1914 
"General  Headquarters  to  the  military  representative  on  the  Russian 
and  French  fronts,  as  well  as  in  Italy  and  Norway: 
"In  all  branch  establishments  of  German  banking  houses  in  Sweden, 
Norway,  Switzerland,  China,  and  the  United  States,  special  military 
accounts  have  been  opened  for  special  war  necessities.  Main  head- 
quarters authorizes  you  to  use  these  credits  to  an  unlimited  extent 
for  the  purpose  of  destroying  factories,  workshops,  camps,  and  the 
most  important  centers  of  military  and  civil  supply  belonging  to  the 
enemy.  In  addition  to  the  incitement  of  labor  troubles,  measures  must 
be  taken  for  the  damaging  of  engines  and  machinery  plants,  the  de- 
struction of  vessels  carrying  war  material  to  enemy  countries,  the 
burning  of  stocks  of  raw  materials  and  finished  goods,  and  the  depriv- 
ing of  large  industrial  centers  of  electric  power,  fuel,  and  food.  Spe- 
cial agents,  who  will  be  placed  at  your  disposal,  will  supply  you  with 
the  necessary  means  for  effecting  explosions  and  fires,  as  well  as  with 
a  list  of  people  in  the  country  under  your  supervision  who  are  willing 
to  undertake  the  task  of  destruction. 

"(Signed)     Dr.   E.  Fischer." 


28o       THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA 

ment  office  has  been  established  which  provides  employment 
for  persons  who  have  voluntarily  given  up  their  places,  and 
it  is  already  working  well.  We  shall  also  join  in  and  the 
widest  support  is  assured  us." 

This  German  employment  bureau  had  a  central  office  in 
New  York  City  and  branches  in  Bridgeport,  Philadelphia, 
Pittsburg,  Cleveland,  Chicago,  and  Cincinnati.  It  was  es- 
tablished early  in  August,  191 5,  by  the  attaches  and  re- 
sponsible agents  of  the  German  and  Austrian  Embassies. 
The  pretended  purpose  of  the  Bureau  was  to  provide  em- 
ployment for  German  and  Austrian  subjects  who  had  volun- 
tarily left  positions  in  factories  supplying  the  Allies. 

That  coercion  and  intimidation  were  regularly  used  by 
the  Bureau  to  drive  employees  from  munition  factories  has 
been  proved  by  an  examination  of  over  5,000  letters  and 
other  papers  in  its  files.  The  Austrian  Government  re- 
enforced  these  efforts  by  circulating  in  this  country,'  through 
the  foreign  language  press,  a  proclamation  which  threatened 
with  a  penalty  of  ten  to  twenty  years'  imprisonment,  all 
subjects  who  after  working  in  such  plants  returned  to  their 
native  land.  Captain  von  Papen  also  sent  out  a  circular  letter 
of  similar  import. 

Success  rewarded  these  energetic  efforts  to  harass  Amer- 
ican manufacturers.  The  Bureau  manager's  monthly  re- 
port, made  to  the  German  Embassy  for  February,  19 16, 
contains  the  following  statements: 

"Since  the  Bureau  began  its  work  in  August,  191 5, 
through  February,  1916,  2,828  Germans  and  1,638  subjects 
of  the  Austro-Hungarian  monarchy  have  been  provided  for. 
The  total  number  of  applicants  is  now  8,000.  Of  these 
60  per  cent,  came  from  factories  producing  munition  and 
war  material,  and  40  per  cent,  would  have  been  employed  in 
such  plants  if  the  agency  had  not  provided  for  them." 

"Engineers  and  persons  in  the  better  class  of  positions 
were  persuaded  by  the  propaganda  of  the  Bureau  to  leave 
war  material  factories." 

"The  commercial  employment  bureaus  of  the  country 
have  no  supply  of  unemployed  technicians.  Many  disturb- 
ances and  suspensions  which  war  material   factories  have 


THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA       281 

had  to  suffer,  and  which  it  was  not  always  possible  to  re- 
move quickly,  but  which  on  the  contrary  often  lead  to  long 
strikes,  may  be  attributed  to  the  energetic  propaganda  of 
the  employment  bureau." 

Causing  Strikes 

The  strike  was  a  weapon  which  both  the  German  and 
Austrian  Ambassadors  intended  to  use  with  destructive  ef- 
fect on  American  industry.  Ambassador  Dumba,  in  a  let- 
ter to  his  Foreign  Office,  thus  expressed  their  fundamental 
purpose :  "It  is  my  impression  that  we  can  disorganize  and 
hold  up  for  months,  if  not  entirely  prevent,  the  manufacture 
of  munitions  in  Bethlehem  and  the  Middle  West,  which  in 
the  opinion  of  the  German  Military  Attache,  is  of  importance 
and  amply  outweighs  the  comparatively  small  expenditure 
of  money  involved." 

The  most  comprehensive  and  successful  effort  to  pro- 
voke strikes  was  made  by  Labor's  National  Peace  Council, 
an  organization  financed  by  Franz  von  Rintelen,  who  came 
to  the  United  States  early  in  April,  191 5. 

The  alleged  purpose  of  the  Council  was  to  express  the 
pacific  sentiments  of  the  workers  and  to  prevent  the  United 
States  from  entering  the  war.  At  its  first  meeting,  on  June 
22,  1 91 5,  it  adopted  among  others  the  following  resolu- 
tion: "Resolved,  By  the  representatives  of  labor  in  Peace 
Congress  assembled  in  the  City  of  Washington,  that  an  or- 
ganization be  and  is  hereby  established,  to  be  known  as 
Labor's  National  Peace  Council,  having  for  its  purpose  the 
establishment  and  maintenance  of  peace  universal  by  all  hon- 
orable means." 

A  serious  attempt  was  made  to  paralyze  America's  for- 
eign commerce  by  a  strike  of  stevedores.  One  of  Rintelen's 
men  had  an  interview  with  the  President  of  the  International 
Longshoremen's  Union,  and  other  officials  were  approached. 
Rintelen  agreed  to  pay  the  strikers  ten  dollars  a  week  while 
idle,  and  asserted  that  he  could  command  the  $1,035,000 
necessary  for  this  purpose.  He  spent  $10,000  on  this  project, 
but  the  strike  did  not  occur. 

The  total  of  his  known  expenditures  was  $468,000,  and 


282       THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA 

in  return  he  received  almost  nothing,  except  an  occasional 
newspaper  article  attacking  President  Wilson.  Nearly  all 
the  strikes  which  his  hired  men  pretended  they  had  started 
and  for  which  they  received  thousands  of  dollars  had  quite 
other  causes.  Rintelen  was  shamelessly  duped  and  swindled 
by  his  supposed  tools. 

Pressure  on  Congress 

The  hand  of  the  German  Government  was  extended  to 
America  to  influence  members  of  Congress  through  German- 
American  voters  and  their  sympathizers.  The  German- 
American  National  Alliance  had  long  endeavored  to  weld 
persons  of  German  descent  in  the  United  States  into  a  com- 
pact body,  to  be  used,  when  desirable,  in  the  interests  of 
Germany.  After  the  war  began,  in  July,  191 4,  prominent 
German-Americans  organized  and  supported  other  societies 
which  aimed  to  persuade  or  intimidate  members  of  Congress 
into  adopting  pro-German  policies. 

One  of  these  organizations  was  the  American  Embargo 
Conference,  established  to  prevent  the  export  of  munitions. 
That  it  was  recognized  as  a  valuable  tool  of  the  German 
Government  and  probably  received  money  from  Berlin  is 
shown  by  the  following  telegram  (September  15,  1916) 
from  Count  Bernstorff  to  the  German  Foreign  Office :  "The 
Embargo  Conference  in  regard  to  whose  earlier  fruitful  co- 
operation Dr.  Hale  can  give  information  is  just  about  to 
enter  upon  a  vigorous  campaign  to  secure  a  majority  in 
both  houses  of  Congress  favorable  to  Germany  and  request 
further  support.  There  is  no  possibility  of  our  being  com- 
promised.    Request  telegraphic  reply." 

The  Embargo  Conference  distributed  to  voters  over 
5,000,000  telegrams  demanding  an  embargo  on  munitions, 
and  at  a  fixed  date  250,000  of  these  identical  messages  poured 
into  Washington.  The  Conference  paid  to  the  telegraph 
companies  in  Chicago  alone  the  sum  of  $20,000.  It  also 
distributed  pamphlets  and  circular  letters  demanding  an 
embargo  and  denouncing  American  makers  of  munitions. 

The  Embargo  Conference  apparently  served  the  German 
Government  well,  for  Count  von  Bernstorff,  in  the  following 


THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA       283 

telegram  to  Berlin,  requests  $50,000  to  be  spent  either  on  this 
or  a  similar  organization  aiming  to  force  pro-German  poli- 
cies on  Congress : 

"I  request  authority  to  pay  out  up  to  $50,000  (fifty 
thousand  dollars)  in  order,  as  on  former  occasions,  to  influ- 
ence Congress  through  the  organization  you  know  of,  which 
can  perhaps  prevent  war. 

"I  am  beginning  in  the  meantime  to  act  accordingly. 

"In  the  above  circumstances  a  public  official  German 
declaration  in  favor  of  Ireland  is  highly  desirable,  in  order 
to  gain  the  support  of  the  Irish  influence  here." 

Causing  War  with  Mexico 

Rintelen  also  tried  to  prevent  the  export  of  munitions 
by  causing  war  between  the  United  States  and  Mexico. 
During  his  trial  at  New  York  City  (May,  191 7),  one  of 
the  witnesses,  an  advertising  man  with  whom  Rintelen  ad- 
vised concerning  his  pacifist  propaganda,  testified  that  Rin- 
telen said: 

"That  he  came  to  the  United  States  in  order  to  embroil 
it  with  Mexico  and  Japan  if  necessary;  that  he  was  doing 
all  he  could  and  was  going  to  do  all  he  could  to  embroil 
this  country  with  Mexico ;  that  he  believed  that  if  the  United 
States  had  a  war  with  Mexico  it  would  stop  the  shipment 
of  ammunition  to  Europe;  that  he  believed  it  would  be  only 
a  matter  of  time  until  we  were  involved  with  Japan. 

"Rintelen  also  said  that  General  Huerta  was  going  to 
return  to  Mexico  and  start  a  revolution  there  which  would 
cause  the  United  States  to  intervene  and  so  make  it  impos- 
sible to  ship  munitions  to  Europe.  Intervention,  he  said, 
was  one  of  his  trump  cards." 

Within  Mexico  itself  other  German  agents  have  been 
conducting  for  many  months  a  powerful  anti-American 
propaganda.  Their  aims  are  to  destroy  American  prestige 
by  teaching  that  the  United  States  is  impotent,  unable  even 
to  prepare  for  war,  and  that  Japan  is  its  enemy ;  also  to  cre- 
ate implacable  hostility  to  the  United  States  by  asserting  that 
it  aims  to  control  or  conquer  Mexico. 

The  culmination  of  Germany's  attempt  to  provoke  war 


284      THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA 

between  the  United  States  and  Mexico  is  the  following  tele- 
gram sent  by  the  German  Foreign  Office  to  Count  von  Bern- 
storff  for  transmission  to  the  German  Ambassador  in  Mex- 
ico, Heinrich  von  Eckhardt : 

"Berlin,  January  19,  1917. 

"On  the  first  of  February  we  intend  to  begin  submarine 
warfare  unrestricted.  In  spite  of  this,  it  is  our  intention  to 
endeavor  to  keep  neutral  the  United  States  of  America. 
If  this  attempt  is  not  successful,  we  propose  an  alliance  on 
the  following  basis  with  Mexico :  That  we  shall  make  war 
together  and  together  make  peace.  We  shall  give  general 
financial  support,  and  it  is  understood  that  Mexico  is  to  re- 
conquer the  lost  territory  in  New  Mexico,  Texas,  and  Ari- 
zona. The  details  are  left  to  you  for  settlement.  You  are 
instructed  to  inform  the  President  of  Mexico  of  the  above  in 
the  greatest  confidence  as  soon  as  it  is  certain  that  there 
will  be  an  outbreak  of  war  with  the  United  States,  and  sug- 
gest that  the  President  of  Mexico,  on  his  own  initiative, 
should  communicate  with  Japan  suggesting  adherence  at  once 
to  this  plan ;  at  the  same  time,  offer  to  mediate  between  Ger- 
many and  Japan. 

"Please  call  to  the  attention  of  the  President  of  Mexico 
that  the  employment  of  ruthless  submarine  warfare  now 
promises  to  compel  England  to  make  peace  in  a  few  months. 

"ZlMMERMANN." 

Destruction  of  Ships  and  Their  Cargoes 

If  strikes  should  fail  to  close  American  munition  plants, 
if  money  were  lacking  to  buy  up  all  their  products,  and  if  the 
Government  refused  an  embargo,  Germany's  agents  had  yet 
another  resource — to  destroy  war  materials  and  other  sup- 
plies for  the  Entente  States  while  in  course  of  shipment  by 
sea.  One  project  of  this  kind  was  carried  out  under  the  di- 
rection of  Captain  von  Papen  and  Wolf  von  Igel.  It  con- 
sisted in  placing  in  the  holds  of  steamers  incendiary  bombs 
which,  at  a  fixed  time,  would  explode  and  ignite  the  sur- 
rounding cargo.  The  bomb  shells  were  manufactured  from 
designs  by  Dr.  Walter  T.  Scheele,  a  German  chemist  of  Ho- 
boken,  on  the  Friedrich  der  Grosse  of  the  North  German 


THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA       285 

Lloyd  line,  and  were  then  taken  to  Dr.  Scheele's  laboratory 
and  filled  with  combustibles. 

When  the  conspirators  were  tried,  one  of  the  witnesses 
called  was  a  detective  who  belonged  to  the  New  York  bomb 
squad  and  had  worked  on  the  case.  Under  the  pretense  that 
he  was  a  German  secret  service  man  employed  by  Wolf 
von  Igel,  he  had  succeeded  in  making  an  appointment  with 
Captain  von  Kleist,  superintendent  of  Scheele's  factory,  and 
thus  recounted  the  conversation  with  him : 

"We  sat  down  and  we  spoke  for  about  three  hours.  I 
asked  him  the  different  things  that  he  did,  and  said  if  he 
wanted  an  interview  with  Mr.  von  Igel,  my  boss,  he  would 
have  to  tell  everything.  So  he  told  me  that  von  Papen  gave 
Dr.  Scheele,  the  partner  of  von  Kleist  in  this  factory,  a 
check  for  $10,000  to  start  this  bomb  factory.  He  told  me 
that  he,  Mr.  von  Kleist,  and  Dr.  Scheele  and  a  man  by  the 
name  of  Becker  on  the  Friedrich  der  Grosse,  were  making 
the  bombs,  and  that  Captain  Wolpert,  Captain  Bode,  and 
Captain  Steinberg,  had  charge  of  putting  these  bombs  on 
the  ships;  they  put  these  bombs  in  cases  and  shipped  them 
as  merchandise  on  these  steamers,  and  they  would  go  away 
on  the  trip  and  the  bombs  would  go  off  after  the  ship  was 
out  four  or  five  days,  causing  a  fire  and  causing  the  cargo 
to  go  up  in  flames.  He  also  told  me  that  they  have  made 
quite  a  number  of  these  bombs;  that  thirty  of  them  were 
given  to  a  party  by  the  name  of  O'Leary,  and  that  he  took 
them  down  to  New  Orleans,  where  he  had  charge  of  put- 
ting them  on  ships  down  there,  this  fellow  O'Leary." 

Between  300  and  400  bombs  were  manufactured,  and 
fires  were  started  by  them  on  thirty-three  ships  sailing  from 
New  York  alone. 

Four  of  the  bombs  were  found  at  Marseilles  on  a  vessel 
which  sailed  from  Brooklyn  in  May,  191 5.  The  evidence 
collected  in  the  case  led  to  the  indictment  of  the  following 
men  for  feloniously  transporting  on  the  steamship  Kirk 
Oswald  a  bomb  or  bombs  filled  with  chemicals  designed  to 
cause  incendiary  fires :  Rintelen,  Wolpert,  Bode,  Schmidt, 
Becker,  Garbade,  Praedel,  Paradies,  von  Kleist,  Schimmel, 
Scheele,  Steinberg,  and  others.     The  last  three  named  fled 


286       THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA 

from  justice,  Scheele  being  supplied  with  $1,000  for  that 
purpose  by  Wolf  von  Igel.  He  eluded  the  Federal  authori- 
ties until  April,  19 18,  when  he  was  found  hiding  in  Cuba 
under  the  protection  of  German  secret  service  agents.  All 
the  others  except  Schmidt  were  found  guilty  and  sentenced, 
on  February  5,  191 8,  to  imprisonment  for  eighteen  months 
and  payment  of  a  fine  of  $2,000  each.  It  was  proved  during 
the  trial  that  Rintelen  had  hired  Schimmel,  a  German  law- 
yer, to  see  that  bombs  were  placed  on  ships. 

A  similar  scheme  was  conceived  by  Albert  Kaltschmidt, 
of  Detroit,  who  hoped,  however,  not  only  to  disable  ships 
but  to  destroy  them  entirely.  He  hired  Charles  Respa, 
Richard  Hermann,  and  a  man  known  as  "Frenchy,"  for 
$150  each,  to  undertake  this  work.  Provided  with  an  ample 
supply  of  dynamite,  painted  to  resemble  coal,  they  went  to 
New  York  City  and  tried  by  the  use  of  a  launch  to  approach 
coal  barges  and  place  the  dynamite  in  the  fuel  intended  for 
ocean-going  steamers.  Guards  were  so  vigilant,  however, 
that  nothing  could  be  accomplished. 

Germany's  official  representatives  on  the  Pacific  coast 
were  engaged  in  similar  enterprises.  The  leader  was  Franz 
Bopp,  German  Consul-General  at  San  Francisco.  His  chief 
assistants  were  Baron  Eckhardt  von  Schack,  the  vice-consul, 
Lieutenant  Wilhelm  von  Brincken  of  the  consulate,  and 
Charles  C.  Crowley,  a  detective  employed  by  Bopp  as  secret 
investigator.  Lewis  J.  Smith,  a  confederate,  describes  a 
part  of  their  operations  in  a  statement  made  to  Federal  offi- 
cials. 

Johannes  H.  van  Koolbergen,  born  in  Holland  and  nat- 
uralized in  Canada,  made  a  statement  before  British  offi- 
cials at  San  Francisco,  concerning  his  relations  with  Con- 
sul-General Bopp.  After  describing  a  pretended  attempt  to 
blow  up  a  tunnel  on  the  Canadian-Pacific  Railroad,  van 
Koolbergen  says  that  he  was  again  summoned  to  meet  von 
Brincken  and  that  the  following  conversation  occurred :  "I 
went  up  to  the  Palace  Hotel  in  San  Francisco.  Von  Brincken 
took  me  to  his  room  and  explained  to  me  how  an  instrument 
could  be  made  for  the  purpose  of  causing  an  explosion  at 
the  time  set,  and  asked  me  if  I  was  capable  and  willing  to 


THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA       287 

make  such  an  instrument,  and  asked  me  how  much  I  would 
want  for  it.  He  explained  to  me  that  a  club  or  association 
of  fifteen  Germans  who  all  worked  as  longshoremen  on  the 
docks  of  San  Francisco  would  have  access  to  outgoing  boats 
and  could  place  one  or  more  of  these  infernal  machines  on 
board  boats  of  German  enemies. 

"The  whole  had  to  be  small  enough  to  go  into  a  thermos 
bottle.  The  object  of  it  being  that  a  man  at  the  harbor 
could  carry  a  thermos  bottle  with  him  without  being  sus- 
pected of  having  anything  injurious  or  dangerous  with  him." 

Van  Koolbergen  then  describes  the  making  of  a  dummy 
bomb,  and  proceeds  thus :  "I  then  went  to  see  von  Brincken 
in  his  room  and  showed  him  my  work  and  he  exclaimed  that 
it  was  'famos.'  Mr.  Bopp  [who  saw  it  at  the  consulate] 
said  that  Mr.  von  Brincken  was  very  satisfied  with  this  ma- 
chine and  ordered  the  thermos  bottle  put  in  the  safe,  where  I 
saw  it  yesterday,  August  26,  1915." 

The  statements  of  Smith  and  van  Koolbergen,  combined 
with  a  mass  of  other  evidence  consisting  in  part  of  letters 
and  telegrams,  caused  the  Grand  Jury  to  indict  Consul-Gen- 
eral Bopp,  his  staff  and  his  hired  agents,  for  conspiracy  to 
undertake  a  military  enterprise  against  Canada.  Among 
the  purposes  of  this  enterprise  specified  in  the  indictment 
was  the  following :  "To  blow  up  and  destroy  with  their  car- 
goes and  crews  any  and  all  vessels  belonging  to  Great  Britain, 
France,  Japan  or  Russia  found  within  the  limits  of  Canada, 
which  were  laden  with  horses,  munitions  of  war,  or  articles 
of  commerce  in  course  of  transportation  to  the  above  coun- 
tries." 

As  the  first  ships  marked  for  destruction  sailed  from 
Tacoma,  Smith  rented  a  house  there  with  half  cleared  land 
attached,  in  order  that  he  might  have  dynamite  in  his  pos- 
session with  the  pretended  purpose  of  blowing  up  stumps. 
Crowley  followed  him  to  Tacoma  within  a  day  or  two,  and 
Smith's  narrative  of  the  events  there  is  here  given  in  con- 
densed form : 

"When  the  Talthybius  [a  British  freighter]  was  ready 
to  sail  Smith  says  that  he  prepared  the  bomb  made  of  40 
sticks  of  dynamite,  put  the  sticks  in  the  suitcase.     He  did 


288       THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA 

not  put  dynamite  either  on  the  cars  or  on  the  boat,  but  told 
Crowley  that  he  did. 

"At  a  later  date,  May  28th  [191 5],  Crowley  came  and 
wanted  another  bomb  prepared. 

"The  Shinsci  Maru  was  the  ship  which  they  looked  for 
that  Friday  night,  Crowley  telling  Smith  that  the  bomb 
must  be  gotten  off  on  the  first  string  of  cars  off  the  wharf. 
He  says  that  Crowley  left  him  and  that  after  a  time  he  threw 
the  dynamite  away ;  that  he  went  to  Crowley's  hotel  and  de- 
ceived him  in  the  belief  that  he  had  put  a  bomb  on  board 
the  ship  that  night. 

"About  the  29th  of  May,  Saturday,  Smith  says  they  tried 
to  get  a  bomb  into  the  cotton  that  the  Hazel  Dollar  was 
loading  and  that  he  told  Crowley  that  he  had  put  the  bomb 
in.    Smith  says  he  threw  the  dynamite  away  in  a  cesspool."  3 

Attacks  on  Canada 

The  next  chief  purpose  of  the  German  Ambassador  and 
his  lieutenants  in  America  was  to  prevent  Canada  from  giv- 
ing military  aid  to  England.  That  this  enterprise  was 
carried  on  at  the  command  of  the  German  General  Staff  is 
indicated  by  the  following  telegrams  sent  in  January,  191 6, 
to  Count  von  Bernstorff : 

"January  3rd.  (Secret.)  General  Staff  desires  ener- 
getic action  in  regard  to  proposed  destruction  of  Canadian 
Pacific  Railway  at  several  points  with  a  view  to  complete 
and  protracted  interruption  of  traffic.  Captain  Boehm,  who 
is  known  on  your  side  and  shortly  returning,  has  been 
given  instructions.  Inform  the  Military  Attache  and  provide 
the  necessary  funds.  (Signed)    Zimmermann." 

"January  26th.  For  Military  Attache.  You  can  obtain 
particulars  as  to  persons  suitable  for  carrying  on  sabotage 
in  the  United  States  and  Canada  from  the  following  per- 
sons:  (1)  Joseph  McGarrity,  Philadelphia,  Penn.  (2)  John 
P.    Keating,   Michigan   Avenue,    Chicago.,     (3)    Jeremiah 

8  Of  such  revelations  subsequent  to  the  date  of  Prof.  Sperry's  report, 
perhaps  the  most  startling  was  the  confession  of  L.  Witcke,  in  August, 
1919,  that  he  had  caused  the  terrible  "Black  Tom"  disaster  that  shook 
New  York  City,  and  had  blown  up  other  explosive  stores  and  fac- 
tories. 


THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA       289 

O'Leary,  16  Park  Row,  New  York.  One  and  two  are  abso- 
lutely reliable  and  discreet.  No.  3  is  reliable,  but  not  al- 
ways discreet.  These  persons  were  indicated  by  Sir  Roger 
Casement.  In  the  United  States  sabotage  can  be  carried  out 
on  every  kind  of  factory  for  supplying  munitions  of  war. 
Railway  embankments  and  bridges  must  not  be  touched. 
Embassy  must  in  no  circumstances  be  compromised.  Simi- 
lar precautions  must  be  taken  in  regard  to  Irish  pro-German 
propaganda. 

"(Signed)  Representative  of  General  Staff." 
The  earliest  attempt  to  carry  out  these  plans  of  the  Ger- 
man General  Staff  was  made  by  Horst  von  der  Goltz,  a 
German  citizen  who  came  to  the  United  States  from  Mex- 
ico. In  an  affidavit  he  thus  describes  the  origin  and  purposes 
of  this  project : 

"Shortly  after  my  arrival  at  New  York  [from  Mexico], 
I  received  a  letter  signed  by  Dr.  Kraske,  Vice-Consul  at 
the  German  Consulate  in  New  York,  requesting  me  to  attend 
at  the  consulate  at  a  certain  hour,  in  order  that  I  might  meet 
a  gentleman  who  was  interested  in  me.  The  letter  was  a 
mere  matter  of  form,  intended  to  inform  me  of  the  hour  of 
a  meeting  proposed  to  me  by  Capt.  von  Papen. 

"Attending  to  this  request  I  had  at  first  some  conversa- 
tion with  Capt.  von  Papen  concerning  events  in  Mexico,  and 
afterwards  was  asked  to  give  my  opinion  about  a  proposal 
made  in  a  letter  to  the  German  Embassy,  the  writer  of  which 
asked  for  financial  support,  in  order  to  carry  out  a  scheme 
by  which  he  wrote  he  would  be  able  to  make  raids  on  towns 
situated  on  the  Canadian  coast  of  the  Great  Lakes. 

"The  proposal  being  rejected  on  account  of  the  Embassy 
receiving  unfavorable  information  about  the  writer,  I  was 
first  requested  to  give  my  assistance  to  a  scheme  of  in- 
vasion intended  to  be  put  in  execution  by  seizing  some  spot 
on  the  west  coast  of  Canada  with  the  assistance  of  German 
warships.  Reservists  from  the  United  States  were  to  be 
sent  to  another  neutral  country,  where  they  were  to  be 
embarked.    Such  a  step  it  was  supposed  would : 

"  ( 1 )  Prevent  the  Canadian  contingents  then  under  train- 
ing from  sailing  for  Europe. 

w.,  VOL.  IIL— 19. 


290      THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA 

"(2)  Prevent  Canada  from  supplying  England  with  nec- 
essaries on  account  of  their  being  needed  in  the  country 
itself. 

"  ( 3  )  Bringing  matters  in  the  United  States  to  a  decision, 
the  Government  being  forced  either  to  supply  both  parties 
with  arms  and  ammunition,  or  to  prohibit  the  export  of 
those  articles  altogether." 

After  these  plans  had  been  discussed  at  the  German  Con- 
sulate and  at  the  German  Club  in  New  York  City,  it  was 
decided  that  von  der  Goltz  should  attempt  to  blow  up  the 
Welland  Canal,  the  grain  elevators  at  Fort  William,  and,  if 
possible,  the  Sault  Ste.  Marie  locks  and  railroad  bridges. 
Capt.  von  Papen  supplied  him  at  the  German  Club  with  the 
needed  fuses,  wire,  and  generators,  and  referred  him  for 
dynamite  to  Capt.  Hans  Tauscher,  American  agent  for 
Krupp  and  other  German  makers  of  munitions.  Von  der 
Goltz  told  Tauscher  about  the  plan  to  blow  up  the  Welland 
Canal  and  received  from  him  an  order  for  dynamite. 

Von  der  Goltz  then  went  to  Buffalo  on  the  New  York 
Central  railroad  with  two  suitcases  containing  about  one 
hundred  pounds  of  dynamite,  but  was  unable  to  carry  out 
his  plans,  because  John  Ryan,  a  Buffalo  lawyer,  did  not  give 
him  the  telegraphic  instructions  which  von  Papen  had  sent. 

With  his  confederates,  Tauscher,  von  Papen,  von  Igel, 
Fritzen,  Tuchendler,  and  Covani,  von  der  Goltz  was  indicted 
for  conspiracy  to  set  on  foot  a  military  enterprise  against 
Great  Britain.  Von  Papen  and  Boy-Ed,  being  attached  to 
the  German  Embassy,  were  recalled  by  Germany  on  De- 
cember 10,  191 5,  as  the  result  of  requests  made  by  our 
Department  of  State.  Von  Igel  returned  to  Germany  with 
Ambassador  Bernstorff  in  February,  191 7,  forfeiting  his 
bond.  Tauscher  was  acquitted,  the  jury  appearing  to  be- 
lieve his  statement  that  he  did  not  know  the  intended  use  of 
the  dynamite  which  he  assisted  von  der  Goltz  to  procure. 
Fritzen  pleaded  guilty  on  another  indictment  on  which  he 
was  sentenced  to  eighteen  months  in  prison. 

Another  attempt  to  blow  up  the  Welland  Canal  was  made 
in  September,  1915,  by  PaulKoenig,  head -of  the  Bureau  of 
Investigation  of  the  Hamburg-American  Line.     This  Bu- 


THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA      291 

reau,  increased  in  number  after  the  war  began,  and  operat- 
ing from  the  offices  of  the  steamship  company  at  45  Broad- 
way, became  the  most  dangerous  sub-center  of  criminal  in- 
trigue maintained  in  America  by  the  German  Government. 
Among  Koenig's  papers  is  one  entitled,  "History  of  the 
Bureau  of  Investigation,"  and  under  the  year  1914  occurs 
this  entry : 

"August  22nd.  German  Government,  with  consent  of 
Dr.  Buenz,  entrusted  me  with  the  handling  of  certain  in- 
vestigation. Military  Attache  von  Papen  called  at  my  office 
later  and  explained  the  nature  of  the  work  expected.  (Be- 
ginning of  Bureau's  services  for  Imperial  German  Govern- 
ment.)" 

The  measures  adopted  by  Koenig  to  serve  the  German 
Government  by  blowing  up  the  Welland  Canal  were  described 
in  a  sworn  statement  made  by  George  F.  Fuchs,  a  member 
of  the  secret  service  division  of  the  Hamburg-American 
Line,  with  whom  Koenig  had  a  conversation  in  Buffalo. 
Fuchs  made  a  written  report  to  Koenig  stating,  "that  with 
the  use  of  explosives  the  canal  could  be  crippled  at  a  spot 
where  the  Chippewa  River  runs  under  the  canal  at  Welland." 

Koenig  communicated  with  the  German  Embassy  con- 
cerning the  execution  of  this  criminal  plot,  and  frequently 
received  money  from  both  Boy-Ed  and  von  Papen  for  vari- 
ous kinds  of  subterranean  work.  Koenig  endeavored  to 
protect  himself  and  his  fellow  conspirators  by  depositing  in 
the  German  Embassy  at  Washington  toward  the  close  of 
October,  191 5,  such  papers  as  contained  evidence  of  the 
many  criminal  plots  in  which  they  were  engaged. 

He  did  not  succeed,  however,  in  concealing  all  of  the 
incriminating  evidence  of  his  plot  to  destroy  the  Welland 
Canal,  and  with  an  accomplice,  Emil  Leyendecker,  was  in- 
dicted on  December  23,  191 5,  for  "setting  on  foot  a  military 
enterprise"  against  Great  Britain. 

Another  military  enterprise  against  Canada  was  under- 
taken by  a  prosperous  citizen  of  the  German  Empire  living 
in  Detroit,  Albert  Kaltschmidt.  He  was  a  leader  among  the 
German-Americans  of  his  city,  had  organized  the  Deutscher- 
bund  there  and  was  its  secretary.     The  purposes  of  Kalt- 


292       THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA 

schmidt  and  his  confederates  are  thus  specified  in  their  in- 
dictment by  the  Grand  Jury: 

"(a)  To  blow  up  the  factory  of  the  Peabody's  Com- 
pany, Limited,  at  Walkerville,  Ontario,  .  .  .  engaged  in 
manufacturing  uniforms,  clothing,  and  military  sup- 
plies. .  .  . 

"(b)  To  blow  up  .  .  .  the  building  known  as  the  Wind- 
sor Armories  of  the  City  of  Windsor.  .  .  . 

"(c)  To  blow  up  and  destroy  other  plants  and  build- 
ings in  said  Dominion  of  Canada,  which  were  used  for  the 
manufacture  ...  of  munitions  of  war,  clothing,  uni- 
forms. .  .  . 

"(d)  To  blow  up  and  destroy  the  great  railroad  bridges 
of  the  Canadian  Pacific  Railroad  Co.  at  Nipigon.  .  .  . 

"(e)  To  employ  and  send  into  said  Dominion  of  Canada 
spies  to  obtain  military  information.  .  .  ." 

The  first  grant  of  money  which  Kaltschmidt  received  to 
carry  out  these  plans  was  $2,000,  deposited  on  January  27, 
1915,  in  a  New  York  bank  by  Wolf  von  Igel.  The  original 
order  of  von  Igel  that  this  sum  be  telegraphed  to  Kalt- 
schmidt and  the  latter's  receipt  for  it  were  introduced  as 
evidence  during  the  trial. 

With  this  working  capital  Kaltschmidt  obtained  the  ma- 
terials for  his  enterprise.  In  order  that  suspicion  might  not 
be  aroused  by  the  purchase  of  explosives  in  Detroit,  he  sent 
agents  to  Duluth,  where  they  purchased  the  necessary  dyna- 
mite, took  it  to  Detroit,  and  began  the  construction  of  bombs. 
Two  German  reservists,  Richard  Herman  and  William  M. 
Jarasch,  were  hired  as  confederates  in  Chicago,  where  the 
German  consul-general,  Baron  Kurt  von  Reiswitz,  was 
privy  to  the  plot.  They  laid  plans  under  Kaltschmidt's  di- 
rection, to  blow  up  the  Detroit  Screw  Works,  where  shrap- 
nel was  being  made,  and  the  St.  Clair  tunnel  which  connects 
Canada  with  the  United  States,  but  failed  in  both  attempts. 

Kaltschmidt  was  arrested  in  April,  1917,  and  his  trial 
completed  during  December  of  the  same  year.  The  jury 
found  him  guilty  on  all  charges  in  the  indictment,  and  he 
was  sentenced  to  four  years  in  the  Federal  prison  at  Leaven- 
worth, Kansas,  and  to  pay  a  fine  of  $20,000.    His  sister,  Ida 


THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA       293 

K.  Neef,  was  sentenced  to  three  years  in  the  Detroit  House 
of  Correction  and  to  pay  a  fine  of  $15,000.  Her  husband, 
Fritz  A.  Neef,  was  sentenced  to  two  years  at  Leavenworth 
and  to  pay  a  fine  of  $10,000.  Two  other  accomplices  re- 
ceived lighter  sentences. 

Another  and  more  successful  attack  on  the  Grand  Trunk 
Railway  was  made  at  Vanceboro,  Maine,  where  it  crosses 
the  international  bridge  between  the  United  States  and 
Canada.  Captain  von  Papen  ordered  Werner  Horn,  a  Ger- 
man reserve  lieutenant,  to  blow  up  the  bridge  and  supplied 
him  with  $700.  Horn  was  arrested  immediately  after  an 
explosion  which  partly  damaged  the  bridge,  and  at  his  trial 
in  Boston,  during  June,  191 7,  made  confession  on  the  advice 
of  his  lawyers. 

Attempts  to  Give  Germany  Military  Aid 
Forgery  of  Passports 

The  third  chief  purpose  of  Germany's  diplomatic  offi- 
cials in  the  United  States  was  to  send  troops  and  munitions 
to  the  Central  Empires.  When  the  war  began  in  July, 
1 91 4,  large  numbers  of  German  reservists  were  living  in 
America,  and  in  order  to  avoid  capture  on  their  way  home 
many  of  them  sought  under  false  names  to  obtain  passports 
as  American  citizens.  They  thus  violated  the  law  that 
American  passports  shall  be  issued  only  to  citizens  of  the 
United  States,  and  also  discredited  genuine  passports, 
thereby  causing  delay  and  distress  to  American  citizens 
abroad.  Their  action  also  was  a  violation  of  America's 
neutrality  and  endangered  its  national  honor  and  safety. 

In  order  to  have  at  hand  an  adequate  supply  of  coun- 
terfeit passports,  the  German  Embassy  maintained  an  office 
in  New  York  City,  directed  by  Captain  von  Papen,  where 
they  were  forged  by  wholesale.  German  consuls  in  distant 
cities,  as  Chicago  and  St.  Paul,  were  informed  concerning 
this  office  and  sent  there  for  passports  the  reservists  from 
their  several  localities. 

These  operations  were  known  almost  from  the  first  to  the 
United  States  Secret  Service.  Hans  A.  von  Wedell,  who 
managed  the  office,  took  alarm  and  fled  in  November,  191 4, 


294      THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA 

supplied  with  money  by  von  Papen.  In  the  following  letter, 
found  on  one  of  his  associates,  who  was  arrested  before  he 
had  an  opportunity  to  post  it,  von  Wedell  exonerates  himself 
from  the  charge  of  deserting  his  post  and  shows  the  com- 
plicity of  the  German  Ambassador  in  the  business  of  forging 
passports : 

"His  Excellency,  The  Imperial  German  Ambassador,  Count 
von  Bernstorff,  Washington,  D.  C: 

"...  My  work  was  done.  At  my  departure,  I  left  the 
service  well  organized,  and  worked  out  in  minute  detail,  in 
the  hands  of  my  successor,  Mr.  Karl  Ruroede,  picked  out  by 
myself.  .  .  .  Also,  Ruroede  will  testify  to  you  that  without 
my  preliminary  labors,  it  would  be  impossible  for  him,  as 
well  as  for  Mr.  von  Papen,  to  forward  officers  in  any  way 
whatever.  [He  then  explains  in  detail  his  reason  for  hid- 
ing.] .  .  .  Ten  days  before  my  departure  I  learned  from  a 
telegram  sent  me  by  Mr.  von  Papen  .  .  .  that  Dr.  Starck 
had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  British.  That  gentleman's 
forged  papers  were  liable  to  come  back  and  could  ...  be 
traced  to  me.  Mr.  von  Papen  had  repeatedly  and  urgently 
ordered  me  to  hide  myself.  Mr.  Igel  told  me  that  I  was 
taking  the  matter  altogether  too  lightly,  and  that  I  ought, 
for  God's  sake,  to  disappear.  .  .  . 

"With  expressions  of  the  most  exquisite  consideration, 
I  am  your  Excellency's, 

"Very  respectfully, 

"(Signed)    Hans  Adam  von  Wedell." 

There  are  many  cases,  from  which  the  following  are  a 
selection,  in  which  American  passports  were  fraudulently 
procured  and  used  for  unneutral  purposes.  Captain  Boy-Ed, 
Richard  P.  Stegler,  a  German  citizen,  Richard  Madden,  and 
Vincent  Cook  secured  through  conspiracy  an  American  pass- 
port to  be  used  by  Stegler  while  serving  as  a  spy  in  Europe. 
Boy-Ed  financed  and  directed  Stegler 's  operations,  but  was 
protected  from  prosecution  by  his  diplomatic  immunity. 
Madden  and  Cook  were  sentenced  to  ten  months  and  Stegler 
to  sixty  days  in  jail. 

Albert  Sanders  and  Charles  Wunnenberg,  German  agents 
in  this  country,  have  pleaded  guilty  in  New  York  to  the 


THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA       295 

charge  of  sending  German  spies  to  England  equipped  with 
American  passports.  Gess  D.  Berko,  an  American  citizen, 
secured  an  American  passport  which  was  stolen  by  Stephan 
Csiszar,  an  attache  of  the  Austrian-Hungarian  Consulate  at 
New  York  City,  to  return  to  Austria. 

The  diplomatic  officials  of  Germany  hired  American  citi- 
zens protected  by  genuine  passports  to  use  them  for  dis- 
honorable and  unneutral  purposes,  such  as  to  carry  German 
dispatches  and  to  act  as  spies  in  England.  E.  G.  Woodford, 
for  example,  who  was  sent  to  Europe  by  German  officials 
here,  was  paid  $550  for  his  services  on  orders  from  Berlin. 
The  payments  to  him  are  recorded  in  the  cashbook  of  Wolf 
von  Igel. 

Fraudulent  Manifests 

German  agents  in  the  United  States  also  endeavored  to 
give  military  aid  to  their  country  by  sending  coal  and  other 
supplies  to  German  warships  which  were  raiding  commerce 
in  both  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  oceans.  Such  action  was  a 
violation  of  American  neutrality,  and  in  order  to  evade  the 
law  the  conspirators  took  false  oaths  before  Federal  offi- 
cials concerning  the  ownership  of  vessels,  the  nature  of  their 
cargoes,  and  their  destination.  These  acts,  even  more  than 
the  use  of  forged  passports,  were  likely  to  cause  friction 
between  the  United  States  and  countries  with  which  it  was 
at  peace. 

The  Hamburg-American  Line,  through  its  high  officials 
in  New  York,  repeatedly  defrauded  the  United  States  by 
procuring  false  manifests.  Among  those  involved  were  Dr. 
Buenz,  managing  director,  George  Koetter,  superintending 
engineer,  Adolph  Hachmeister,  purchasing  agent,  and  Jo- 
seph Pappinghaus,  who  together  worked  up  an  elaborate 
machinery  to  deceive  the  Government.  They  confessed  at 
their  trial  that  they  had  sent  out  twelve  ships,  which  were 
proved  by  the  Government  to  have  fraudulent  papers  and  all 
of  which  were  captured  and  interned  before  reaching  their 
destination.  Nine  of  these  vessels  were  chartered,  and  the 
Hamburg- American  Line  paid  to  the  owners  for  their  losses 
about  $1,400,000.     The  copy  of  Captain  Boy-Ed's  account 


296      THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA 

at  a  New  York  bank  indicates  that  he  had  large  sums  at  his 
disposal  for  conducting  Germany's  naval  operations  from 
the  United  States,  and  that  he  reimbursed  the  Hamburg- 
American  Line  for  this  and  other  expenditures. 

Gustav  B.  Kulenkampf  of  New  York,  who  was  em- 
ployed by  the  Hamburg-American  Line  to  draw  up  the  false 
manifests,  stated  at  the  trial  that  he  received  $750,000, 
which  was  subject  to  the  order  of  Captain  Boy-Ed,  naval  at- 
tache of  the  German  Embassy,  and  was  largely  spent  on  the 
Pacific  Coast.  His  evidence  proved  that,  like  the  forgery 
of  passports,  fraud  and  perjury  were  committed  under  the 
direction  of  German  officials  protected  by  the  diplomatic 
privileges  which  all  civilized  nations  consider  sacred.  Buenz, 
Koetter,  and  Hachmeister  were  found  guilty  of  conspiracy 
to  defraud  the  United  States,  and  were  sentenced  in  De- 
cember, 1 91 5,  to  eighteen  months  in  the  Federal  peniten- 
tiary at  Atlanta.  Pappinghaus  was  sentenced  to  a  year  and 
a  day. 

Similar  means  were  employed  by  German  agents  on 
the  western  coast  under  the  direction  of  Captain  Boy-Ed  to 
send  provisions  and  coal  to  German  raiders  in  the  Pacific. 
The  steamers  Sacramento  and  Macallan  were  there  engaged 
in  this  illicit  traffic.  When  the  Sacramento  once  cleared 
with  a  large  cargo  for  Valparaiso,  Chile,  but  reached  there 
empty,  the  captain  explained  that  on  the  way  down  she  had 
been  commandeered  by  the  German  fleet  and  her  cargo  re- 
moved. Besides  the  Hamburg-American  officials  already 
mentioned,  more  than  fifteen  individuals  and  firms  have  been 
convicted  in  the  United  States  courts  of  fraud  or  perjury 
in  their  efforts  to  assist  Germany  by  illegal  means. 

Perjury  was  also  employed  in  a  notable  instance  to  jus- 
tify Germany's  conduct.  When  the  passenger  liner  Lusi- 
tania  was  sunk  by  a  submarine  on  May  7,  191 5,  with  its 
great  load  of  non-combatants,  the  German  Government  and 
its  Ambassador  in  America  asserted  that  she  was  in  law 
and  fact  a  ship  of  war,  because  laden  with  ammunition  and 
armed  with  four  cannon.  In  order  to  prove  this  statement, 
Ambassador  von  Bernstorff  sent  to  the  Department  of 
State  four  affidavits  swearing  that  the  Lusitania  was  armed. 


THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA       297 

Three  of  these  were  worthless  as  testimony,  and  the  fourth 
had  been  procured  by  Paul  Koenig,  of  the  Hamburg- Ameri- 
can Line,  from  Gustav  Stahl,  a  German  reservist.  Federal 
officials  knew  that  the  Lusitania  was  not  armed  and  that 
Stahl  must  have  sworn  falsely.  He  was  accordingly  tried 
for  perjury,  confessed  his  guilt,  and  was  sentenced  to 
eighteen  months  in  the  Federal  penitentiary  at  Atlanta. 

Violations  of  Parole 

When  the  British  fleet  was  clearing  the  seas  of  enemy 
warships,  two  German  cruisers,  Prinz  Eitel  Friedrich  and 
Kronprinz  Wilhelm,  sought  refuge  in  the  harbor  of  Norfolk, 
where  they  were  interned.  The  German  officers  pledged  their 
word  of  honor  to  our  Government,  which  had  opened  the 
harbor  for  their  protection,  that  they  would  not  escape  from 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  United  States,  and  accordingly  were 
allowed  every  liberty. 

Several  officers  of  the  Kronprinz  Wilhelm  purchased  a 
yacht  after  some  weeks  had  passed,  on  the  pretense  that  it 
was  for  pleasure  cruises.  They  secretly  stocked  it  with  sup- 
plies and  one  night  sailed  away.  They  were  given  the  nec- 
essary funds  for  their  escape  by  the  German  Consul  at  Rich- 
mond, and  Captain  Boy-Ed  filed  a  message  at  Sayville,  ask- 
ing the  German  authorities  in  Berlin  for  instructions  for 
these  officers.  Paroled  German  officers  at  San  Francisco 
and  Guam  also  violated  their  oaths  to  remain  within  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  United  States. 

Propaganda  in  German  Interest 

The  aims  of  German  propagandists  in  the  United  States 
were  to  prove  the  justice  of  Germany's  cause  and  the  warmth 
of  her  friendship  for  the  American  people ;  to  procure  from 
Congress  an  embargo  on  munitions  shipped  to  the  Allies 
(although  Germany  sent  to  the  United  States  a  commission 
with  ample  funds  to  buy  such  supplies  for  her  own  use, 
which  commission  organized  or  bought  out  steamship  com- 
panies and  chartered  many  vessels  to  transport  its  purchases 
to  Germany)  ;  to  encourage  pacificism  by  teaching  the  waste 
and  wickedness  of  war;  to  provoke  strife  between  America 


298      THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA 

and  the  Allied  states,  especially  England  and  Japan.  So 
eager  have  German  agents  been  to  cause  friction  between 
the  United  States  and  England  that  Paul  Koenig  attempted 
through  perjury  to  manufacture  evidence  that  supplies  were 
being  sent  from  New  York  to  British  warships. 

Ambassador  von  Bernstorff  took  a  direct  and  active  part 
in  purchasing  the  services  of  those  who  would  aid  Ger- 
many by  creating  opinion  in  her  favor.  His  expenditures 
for  this  purpose  during  less  than  one  month  are  revealed 
by  the  following  receipts : 

Harvard  Club,  27  West  44th  Street, 

New  York,  April  11,  1915. 

My  dear  Count  Bernstorff: — Since  writing  to  you  last 
I  have  received  by  registered  mail  your  check  of  $1,000  for 
traveling  expenses,  for  which  I  thank  you  very  warmly. 
Etc.,  etc. 

(Signed)     Edwin  Emerson. 


New  York,  April  19,  191 5. 
I  acknowledge  herewith  the  receipt  of  $3,000  from  the 
German  Embassy,  Washington,   D.   C,    for  financing  the 
lecture  tour  of  Miss  Ray  Beveridge,  which  sum  was  trans- 
mitted to  me  through  Privy  Councillor  Albert  of  New  York. 

H.  A.  Boas. 


Washington,  D.  C,  April  21,  1915. 

I  acknowledge  herewith  the  receipt  of  $5,000  (five  thou- 
sand dollars)  from  the  Imperial  German  Embassy  in  Wash- 
ington for  the  purpose  of  propaganda. 

James  F.  J.  Archibald. 

Emerson  and  Archibald  were  writers  and  H.  A.  Boas 
was  an  officer  of  the  Hamburg-American  line. 

Checks  and  receipts  for  other  amounts  show  that  Am- 
bassador von  Bernstorff  paid  into  the  treasury  of  Fair  Play, 
a  violently  pro-German  sheet  edited  by  Marcus  Braun,  the 
sum  of  $10,000. 

A.nother  paper  of  the  same  character  which  suddenly 
sprang  into  existence  after  the  war  began  was  the  Bull,  now 
suppressed  by  the  United  States  Government  for  its  sedi- 


THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA       299 

tious  expressions.  That  its  editor,  Jeremiah  O'Leary,  re- 
ceived money  from  Franz  von  Rintelen  is  proved  by  the 
sworn  statements  of  some  of  Rintelen's  other  tools,  and 
there  is  good  evidence,  though  not  absolutely  conclusive, 
that  he  received  money  from  other  German  agents. 

Another  paper  founded  since  the  war  began  and  sup- 
ported by  the  German  Government  was  The  Fatherland, 
established  by  George  Sylvester  Viereck.  While  this  pub- 
lication professed  to  teach  "undiluted  Americanism"  and 
persistently  boasted  of  its  loyalty  to  the  American  Gov- 
ernment and  ideals,  it  steadily  attacked  the  President  and 
other  public  men,  and  demanded  the  adoption  of  policies 
which  would  make  the  United  States  an  ally  of  Germany. 
The  inspiration  of  its  real,  rather  than  its  pretended,  pur- 
poses is  disclosed  in  the  following  letter  from  its  editor  to 
Dr.  Heinrich  F.  Albert,  Germany's  disbursing  agent  in  the 
United  States  : 

Office  of  George  Sylvester  Viereck, 
1 123  Broadway,  New  York,  June  29,  191 5. 

Dear  Dr.  Albert : — In  thinking  the  matter  over,  I  do  not 

think  that  Mrs.  R would  be  the  proper  intermediary 

inasmuch  as  she  does  not  attend  to  her  financial  affairs  her- 
self.   If  it  must  be  a  woman,  Mrs.  G ,  the  mother  of  our 

friend,  Mrs.  L would  be  far  better. 

However,  personally,  I  see  no  reason  why  this  payment 
could  not  be  made  every  month  through  Mr.  Meyer  just 
like  the  other  payments.  If  there  is  any  objection  to  that, 
I  would  suggest  that  the  payments  be  made  to  my  personal 
friend  and  lawyer,  Mr.  Ely  Simpson,  whose  standing  as  my 
legal  adviser  exempts  him  from  any  possible  inquiry. 

As  I  have  already  received  $250  this  month,  I  inclose  a 
statement  for  $1,500  for  June.  Will  you  please  O.  K.  this 
and  I  shall  then  send  my  secretary  for  the  cash.  I  am  send- 
ing this  letter  by  boy  as  for  obvious  reasons  I  do  not  wish 
it  to  go  through  the  mails.  With  kind  regards,  sincerely 
yours,  G.  S.  Viereck. 

The  German  Government  maintained  on  the  Pacific  coast 
at  least  one  similar  periodical,  the  American  Independent, 
controlled  by  the  American  Independence  Union,  which  was 


300      THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA 

a  branch  of  the  American  Embargo  Conference  of  Chicago. 
Its  editor,  A.  D.  Bauer,  has  stated  that  he  received  from 
the  German  Consul-General,  Franz  Bopp,  $1,500  per  month, 
the  payments  being  made  in  cash  by  Lieutenant  von  Brincken, 
of  the  consulate. 

The  publications  which  were  maintained  in  the  United 
States  by  the  German  Government  or  were  subsidized  by  it, 
supported  in  general  the  following  measures :  Enactment 
by  Congress  of  a  law  forbidding  Americans  to  travel  on 
the  ships  of  the  belligerent  states ;  an  embargo  on  munitions ; 
prohibition  by  the  Government  of  loans  to  the  Allied  powers 
and  the  boycott  of  banks  which  made  them;  defeat  of  Wil- 
son for  reelection  in  19 16  and  also  of  Senators  and  Repre- 
sentatives who  would  not  vote  for  bills  favored  by  the  Ger- 
man Government;  pacificism  in  the  sense  that  the  United 
States  should  not  defend  the  lives  and  property  of  its  citi- 
zens from  attack  by  Germany.  They  also  systematically 
defamed  our  Government  and  the  public  men  of  the  United 
States.4 

Letters  and  checks  prove  that  the  Austrian  Embassy  paid 
subsidies  to  several  foreign  language  newspapers,  among 
them  Polish,  Rumanian,  and  Hungarian  publications. 

The  German  War  Office,  acting  through  Ambassador 
von  Bernstorff  and  the  Austrian  Consul-General  in  New 
York,  von  Nuber,  directed  the  American  Correspondence 
Film  Company,  the  purpose  of  which  was  to  distribute  Ger- 
man war  films  in  the  United  States.  The  German  films  ap- 
parently had  a  wide  circulation,  for  Secretary  Zimmermann 
telegraphs  to  von  Bernstorff,  "Spread  films  through  all  Mg 
cities";  and  Baron  Burian,  Foreign  Minister  of  Austn  - 
Hungary,  telegraphed  to  the  president  of  the  film  comr-  .y, 
"Send  films  no  longer  used  in  United  States  to  South  Amer- 
ica, China,  and  Siam." 

4  Of  such  cases  subsequent  to  the  period  of  this  Government  report, 
the  most  notable  was  perhaps  that  of  the  man,  Fox,  who  wrote  a 
number  of  articles  describing  as  an  eye-witness  the  atrocities  com- 
mitted by  the  Russians  while  invading  East  Prussia.  Fox  confessed 
that  he  had  seen  nothing  of  the  sort  whatever,  that  his  articles  were 
wholly  inventions,  and  that  their  character  was  dictated  to  him  by 
German  officials  who  paid  him  for  his  falsehoods. 


THE  SECRET  ATTACK  UPON  AMERICA       301 

Finances  of  the  German  Agents 

The  diplomatic  staff  of  Germany  in  the  United  States 
had  a  generous  supply  of  money  with  which  to  carry  on  its 
operations.  The  essential  features  of  its  financial  system 
are  described  by  Mr.  Frederick  A.  Borgemeister,  confidential 
adviser  to  Dr.  Albert,  who  was  disbursing  agent  for  the 
German  Embassy.  In  a  statement  which  he  made  August 
11-13,  1917,  at  Fort  Oglethorpe,  Georgia,  before  Federal 
officials,  he  said  that  $7,000,000  worth  of  short-term  Ger- 
man treasury  notes  were  sold  by  an  American  banking  house 
early  in  April,  191 5. 

A  sale  of  one-year  notes  of  the  German  Empire  realized 
$3,600,000,  which  was  paid  into  Dr.  Albert's  account.  At 
another  point  in  his  examination  Mr.  Borgemeister  said, 
"". .  e  constantly  received  through  American  correspondents 
of  the  Deutsche  Bank  funds  as  we  required."  Besides  the 
money  realized  from  the  sale  of  securities,  there  was  avail- 
able, for  example,  $300,000  at  one  New  York  bank,  and 
$400,000  at  another,  and  loans  were  also  made  from  Ameri- 
can banks.  The  total  balances  in  the  many  banks  where 
Dr.  Albert  had  deposits  varied  from  $1,000,000  to 
$5,000,000. 

Captain  Boy-Ed  received  substantial  amounts,  said  Mr. 
Borgemeister,  from  Dr.  x\lbert,  and  also  received  funds  di- 
rectly from  Germany. 

All  the  criminal  plots  and  conspiracies  narrated  in  the 
foregoing  pages  were  undertaken  prior  to  the  summer  of 
191 5.  The  German  Government,  nevertheless,  in  Decem- 
ber of  that  year,  sent  to  the  United  States  for  publication  in 
the  press  the  following  authorized  official  lie : 

"The  German  Government  has  naturally  never  know- 
ingly accepted  the  support  of  any  person,  group  of  persons, 
society  or  organization  seeking  to  promote  the  cause  of  Ger- 
many in  the  United  States  by  illegal  acts,  by  counsel  of  vio- 
lence, by  contravention  of  law,  or  by  any  means  whatever 
that  could  offend  the  American  people  in  the  pride  of  their 
own  authority." 


THE  BIG  ALLIED  OFFENSIVE  IN  THE  WEST 

THE  BATTLES  OF  CHAMPAGNE  AND  LOOS 

SEPTEMBER    25TH-OCTOBER    6TH 

COUNT  DE  SOUZA  COLONEL  A.  M.  MURRAY 

FRENCH  AND  GERMAN  GOVERNMENTAL  STATEMENTS 

The  constant  fierce  and  heavy  trench  battle  all  along  the  Western 
front  was  ever  and  again  flaring  up  to  special  intensity,  so  that  we 
have  local  names  for  a  hundred  battles  there,  each  of  which  would 
have  been  accounted  great  in  any  earlier  war.  Of  these,  by  far  the 
largest  in  1915  was  the  French  attack  in  Champagne  in  September. 
With  this  was  combined  a  formidable  French  and  British  attac1-  fur- 
ther north,  usually  called  the  battle  of  Loos.  So  that  the  u::..cd 
assault  was  the  nearest  to  a  big  general  offensive  which  the  west  had 
seen  since  the  Germans  had  checked  their  eager  foes  at  the  Aisne 
in   1914. 

This  September  offensive  had  been  widely  advertised,  doubtless  with 
the  intent  of  drawing  the  Germans  back  from  their  terrible  onslaught 
on  staggering  Russia;  and  this  publicity  of  the  offensive  has  led  to 
endless  dispute  as  to  its  purpose.  Marshal  Joffre  announced  ahead 
of  time  that  he  meant  to  drive  the  Germans  out  of  France  at  once. 
But  later  French  Governmental  reports  declared  that  such  threats  had 
been  issued  only  to  weaken  the  enemy  in  Russia.  Hence  it  is  easy  to 
view  the  September  attack  in  very  diverse  lights,  as  do  the  following 
narratives — as  a  failure  since  it  did  not  break  the  German  lines,  or  as 
a  victory  since  it  captured  some  of  their  strongest  defenses  and  com- 
pelled them  to  use  huge  forces  in  heavy  counter-attacks. 

Probably  the  historian  of  a  future  generation  will  summarize  the 
assault  as  simply  another  evidence  that  defense  was  in  1915  much 
stronger  than  attack.  He  will  weigh  the  diverse  statements  and  esti- 
mates of  losses  and  conclude  that  while  both  sides  suffered  more  than 
they  dared  admit,  the  Ally  losses  were  probably  the  heavier.  He 
will  declare  that  the  assault  was  a  strategic  necessity,  that  the  Allies 
simply  had  to  make  it  so  as  to  test  their  own  power  and  to  satisfy 
their  world,  and  that  it  was  accomplished  in  about  the  best  way  and 
at  the  least  cost  that  human  skill  could  devise.  The  heroism  dis- 
played on  every  side  was  of  that  highest  character  which  so  gloriously 
distinguished  the  Great  War. 


302 


■        ■;  „  I 

ilohai^  aril  riJiw 


r 


/. 


/-,p 


/ 


{£\ermany\in  the  Air 

German  airplanes 
with  the  Fren>*i 


Painting  by  Prof.  M.  Zeno  DicaaBr^ — 


9j> 


THE  BIG  ALLIED  OFFENSIVE  303 

BY    COUNT    CHARLES   DE   SOUZA 

IT  was  during  the  latter  stages  of  the  Russian  retreat  that 
there  was  a  notable  increase  of  artillery  activity  on  the 
side  of  the  Allies  on  the  Western  front — and  during  that 
period  also  started  the  munitions  campaign  for  increasing 
the  output  of  the  war  factories  in  England  and  in  France. 
This  question  was  an  involved  one,  but  its  aim  was  clear,  at 
least  to  those  who  viewed  the  progress  of  affairs  with  an 
impartial  eye :  it  was  meant  to  replace  an  "advance"  in  kind 
by  a  stationary  one  with  shells ;  in  other  words,  to  achieve 
the  results  of  a  general  offensive  without  incurring  the  losses 
which  such  a  movement  would  have  entailed. 

Up  to  then  all  artillery  actions  in  the  siege  warfare  had 
been  of  a  local  character;  but  gradually  as  the  Teutonic 
eastern  armies  pressed  on  in  Russia,  more  and  more  bat- 
teries were  brought  into  play  by  the  Allies  in  France;  until 
the  whole  front  from  the  Belgian  coast  to  the  Swiss  frontier 
became  a  continuous  blaze  of  guns,  the  tremendous  line  of 
fire  being  prolonged  seawards  by  a  fleet  of  seventy-five  ves- 
sels which  bombarded  the  shore  from  Ostend  to  Zeebrugge; 
and  the  general  bombardment  being  supplemented  by  numer- 
ous air  raids  which  were  carried  out  on  the  enemy's  field 
depots  and  communications. 

Such  action  was  calculated  to  disturb  the  German  gen- 
erals, who  were  bound  to  interpret  it  as  an  ominous  sign  of 
a  coming  onslaught  on  the  part  of  their  Western  foes;  and 
the  immediate  result  of  it  was  that  strong  German  reserves, 
not  less  than  sixteen  divisions — divisions  which  had  been 
intended  for  the  Russian  front — together  with  a  certain  num- 
ber of  units  which  had  fought  in  Poland,  were  immediately 
sent  to  France;  and  there  was  a  distinct  slackening  of  the 
German  forward  movement  in  Russia.  This  occurred  dur- 
ing the  first  stage  of  the  Allied  general  bombardment  (Au- 
gust-September). 

Owing  to  a  momentary  shortage  of  shells,  however,  due 
to  excessive  and  unforeseen  expenditure,  the  bombardment 
abated  somewhat,  and  as  no  attacks  followed,  the  enemy, 
who  was  still  in  doubt  as  to  the  real  intentions  of  the  Allies, 


304  THE  BIG  ALLIED  OFFENSIVE 

resumed  his  action  in  the  East,  towards  Riga,  Wilna,  and  the 
Pripet  Marshes.  The  Russians  were  not  demoralized,  and 
they  had  been  allowed  some  respite;  so,  in  an  endeavor  to 
establish  themselves  at  last  on  some  sound  defensive  line, 
they  frustrated  Hindenburg's  attempts  to  reach  Riga ;  to  en- 
velop a  portion  of  their  forces  at  Wilna;  and  to  drive  their 
southwestern  armies  in  confusion  over  the  Marshes;  and 
they  were  also  able  to  maintain  their  footing  on  the  banks 
of  the  Dniester  from  where  the  Austrians  attempted  vainly 
to  dislodge  them.  Nevertheless,  they  were  in  great  difficul- 
ties and  would  probably  have  been  compelled  to  retire  fur- 
ther back,  had  not  JofTre  in  the  West  been  able  to  resume 
his  own  action,  and  to  launch  combined  attacks  which  com- 
pelled the  Germans  to  relinquish  their  object  and  to  divert 
more  of  their  central  reserves  to  France. 

It  was  towards  the  end  of  September  that  the  Allied 
movement,  which  has  been  inaccurately  described  as  a  "gen- 
eral" offensive,  began.  The  true  aim  of  the  Allied  offensive 
was  made  sufficiently  clear  by  the  restricted  sectors  of  the 
front  on  which  it  was  executed,  but  the  issue  was  confused 
by  a  variety  of  factors  which  made  it  appear  that  the  chief 
object  of  Joffre  and  his  Generals  was  to  pierce  the  German 
lines;  and  which  thereby  spoilt  some  of  the  effects  which 
the  movement  was  intended  to  produce.  The  proclamations 
which  the  Allied  Generals  issued  to  stimulate  the  ardor  of 
their  troops  were  wrongly  interpreted,  and,  as  usual,  the 
popular  imagination  assigned  to  Joffre  objects  which 
the  great  commander  had  not  the  faintest  intention  nor  the 
slightest  reasons  to  strive  for.  As  always  his  mind 
was  intent  on  the  strategic  problem ;  and  barring  the  help  he 
was  called  on  to  afford  Russia,  he  had  no  further  aims,  as 
regards  the  Germans,  than  those  he  wished  to  attain  through 
hi?  "nibbling"  policy.  In  other  words,  he  meant  to  refuse, 
right  to  the  end,  to  be  drawn  into  a  costly  general  attack 
on  the  German  fortified  positions  which,  he  knew,  extended 
for  miles  behind  their  main  front. 

But  it  must  be  said  that  General  Joffre  prepared  his  move 
in  a  way  which  was  bound,  at  least  momentarily,  to  mislead 
not  only  the  enemy,  but  the  Allies  themselves. 


THE  BIG  ALLIED  OFFENSIVE  305 

The  renewed  artillery  activity  was  increased  to  the  ut- 
most intensity ;  and  finally  powerful  concentrations  were  car- 
ried out  at  various  points  besides  those  on  which  to  deliver 
the  attacks.  The  outcome  of  it  all  was  that  eight  French 
army  corps  out  of  a  total  of  forty-two  on  the  line  took  action 
on  a  length  of  front  not  exceeding  twenty  miles ;  and  that  the 
British  forces,  which,  on  the  receipt  of  further  reinforce- 
ments consisted  of  six  army  corps  portioned  into  three 
armies  and  had  extended  their  front  to  fifty  miles,  took 
action  simultaneously  on  a  front  of  not  more  than  ten  miles ; 
so  the  much  expected  and  tremendously  advertised  "general" 
offensive  of  the  Allies  on  the  Western  front  resolved  itself 
into  a  minor  one,  in  which  only  a  small  fraction  of  the  troops 
on  the  spot  were  employed. 

The  British  forces  on  the  fighting  front  consisted  of  two 
armies,  the  1st  under  Sir  Douglas  Haig,  which  had  since 
June  gradually  extended  its  front  south  of  La  Bassee  towards 
the  Lorette  Plateau  which  the  French  had  captured  in  June ; 
the  2nd  army  (General  Plumer)  to  the  north  of  it  extended 
as  far  as  Boesinghe  on  the  Yperlee  Canal,  where  it  was  in 
touch  with  the  36th  French  army  corps  (General  Hely  d'Ois- 
sel).  Other  British  forces,  termed  the  3rd  army,  were 
mostly  still  in  process  of  formation,  and  they  lay  in  reserve 
in  the  bases  and  training  camps  at  the  rear.  Some  portions 
of  it  being  intercalated,  for  training  purposes,  in  the  French 
lines  on  the  Somme.  Of  all  these  troops  only  the  portions 
under  the  immediate  command  of  General  Haig  took  action 
in  the  battle  of  Loos. 

In  the  center  of  the  Allied  line,  in  Champagne,  portions 
of  the  4th  and  5th  French  armies,  under  the  higher  control 
of  General  de  Castelnau,  assaulted  the  German  positions  be- 
tween Souain  and  Massiges;  whilst  in  Artois  half-a-dozen 
divisions  of  the  10th  French  army,  under  General  d'Urbal, 
supported  the  action  of  the  4th  British  army  corps  towards 
Lens. 

The  British,  renewing  the  tactics  of  Neuve  Chapelle,  ad- 
vanced suddenly  and  boldly  on  a  broad  front  and  carried 
the  German  advanced  lines  very  rapidly.  The  Germans, 
locally,  were  taken  by  surprise;  besides,  the  demands  of  the 

v,r.,  vol.  in.— 20. 


306  THE  BIG  ALLIED  OFFENSIVE 

Argonne  attack  they  had  unwittingly  started,  prevented  them 
from  reen  forcing  sufficiently  and  in  time  the  sectors  at 
which  they  were  themselves  attacked.  Thus  it  was  that  after 
an  artillery  preparation,  lengthy  and  powerful,  which 
wrecked  the  more  advanced  German  defenses,  the  assailants 
both  in  Artois  and  in  Champagne  were  able  to  capture,  at 
a  minimum  cost,  a  good  deal  of  ground,  and  to  inflict  severe 
losses  on  the  foe. 

In  Champagne  especially  the  French,  carried  away  by  a 
tremendous  enthusiasm,  played  havoc  amongst  the  enemy; 
they  cleared  with  comparative  ease  the  field-works,  dug-outs 
and  trenches  which  their  guns  had  demolished,  and  they 
stormed  stronger  strongholds  bristling  with  arms  and  de- 
fenses of  every  description.  Colonials,  infantry  of  the  line 
and  reserve  troops  behaved  equally  well ;  and  mounted  units 
shared  in  the  exhilarating  work  of  rounding  up  the  routed 
enemy.  The  difficulty  on  that  occasion  was  not  so  much  of 
vanquishing  the  foe,  but  of  restraining  the  victorious  troops 
once  the  main  task  was  accomplished. 

In  the  general  elation  which  prevailed  some  battalions 
consisting  of  very  young  men  got  out  of  hand,  and  they  were 
seen  rushing  forward  over  the  devastated  ground  towards 
the  rear  of  the  enemy's  second  positions,  where  they  were 
naturally  promptly  slain,  or  taken  prisoners,  this  enabling 
the  Germans  to  claim  some  captures,  which  were  paltry  in- 
deed in  comparison  with  those  the  French  had  made.  The 
latter  at  the  end  of  a  week's  fighting  summed  up  the  enemy 
losses  as  follows:  100,000  casualties,  23,000  prisoners,  155 
guns,  and  over  a  hundred  smaller  pieces — quick-firers,  trench 
mortars,  etc. — together  with  a  considerable  amount  of  other 
material;  all  this  for  the  Champagne  battle  alone. 

Such  a  victory,  had  it  been  won  by  the  other  side,  would 
have  filled  the  world  with  awe  and  admiration.  Unfortu- 
nately for  the  victors,  it  was  won  by  them  on  French  soil, 
and  it  failed  thereby  to  give  satisfaction  to  the  immense 
army  of  amateur  critics  who  were  looking  to  an  advance  on 
Berlin.  The  British  army,  especially,  which  had  done  won- 
ders in  the  north,  came  under  the  lash  of  the  irrepressible 
fire  eaters.     Its  more  apparent — and  inevitable — faults  and 


THE  BIG  ALLIED  OFFENSIVE  307 

deficiencies  were  laid  bare;  and  whilst  what  it  had  achieved 
was  thrust  aside  or  forgotten,  what  it  had  not  achieved,  and 
was  not  intended  to  achieve,  was  constantly  dwelt  upon. 

BY  COLONEL  A.   M.   MURRAY 

The  Paris  communique  issued  on  the  night  of  Saturday, 
September  25th,  conveyed  the  first  news  of  the  beginning 
of  the  Anglo-French  offensive  between  the  La  Bassee  Canal 
and  Arras,  and  of  the  French  offensive  in  Champagne.  Ac- 
cording to  a  secret  order  issued  by  General  Joffre  on  Sep- 
tember 14th,  and  found  by  the  Germans  on  a  fallen  French 
officer,  the  troops  engaged  in  the  attack  comprised  thirty- 
five  divisions  under  General  Castelnau,  who  had  command  of 
the  Champagne  operations,  eighteen  divisions  under  Gen- 
eral Foch,  who  commanded  the  Tenth  French  Army,  thir- 
teen British  divisions  under  Field-Marshal  French,  and 
fifteen  cavalry  divisions,  of  which  five  were  British.  In  ad- 
dition to  these  first  line  troops,  twelve  infantry  divisions  and 
the  Belgian  Army  were  held  in  reserve.  Five  thousand  guns 
were  to  be  brought  into  action,  2,000  being  heavy  guns,  and 
3,000  field  pieces.  Eliminating  non-combatants,  these  for- 
mations would  yield  something  like  1,200,000  infantry,  with 
60,000  cavalry,  and  100,000  artillerymen.  When  he  issued 
his  first  order  General  Joffre  evidently  hoped  for  decisive  re- 
sults, for  he  followed  it  up  next  day  with  a  second  order  tell- 
ing Generals  commanding  divisions  that  his  intention  was 
to  "drive  the  Germans  out  of  France,  liberate  those  of  our 
countrymen  who  have  been  suppressed  for  the  last  twelve 
months,  and  snatch  away  from  the  enemy  the  valuable  pos- 
session of  the  occupied  territory." 

In  the  north,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Loos,  operations 
began  at  6.30  a.  m.  on  Saturday,  September  25th,  the  agreed 
plan  of  attack  being  for  the  2nd  British  Army  under  Sir 
Douglas  Haig  to  push  its  way  between  the  La  Bassee  Canal 
and  Lens,  while  the  French  advance  was  to  be  made  south 
of  Lens,  the  two  forces  forming  a  junction  east  of  the  town 
with  the  object  of  surrounding  it.  With  this  purpose  in 
view,  Sir  Douglas  Haig  deployed  the  1st  Corps  under  Lieut. - 
General  Hubert  Gough  between  the  Canal  and  Vermelles, 


3o8 


THE  BIG  ALLIED  OFFENSIVE 


while  the  4th  Corps,  under  Lieut. -General  Sir  Henry  Rawlin- 
son,  prolonged  the  line  of  attack  down  to  Grenay.  The  at- 
tack of  the  first  Corps  had  only  a  limited  success.  The  2nd 
Division  was  pulled  up  at  the  start,  and  its  failure  to  secure 
the  left  flank  interfered  with  the  operations  of  the  9th  Divi- 
sion fighting  on  its  right.  The  26th  Brigade  of  the  latter 
Division  carried  the  Hohenzollern  Redoubt,  but  failed  to 
reach  Haisnes  for  want  of  support.  The  27th  Brigade  ar-' 
rived  at  11  a.  m.,  but  by  that  time  the  Germans  had  been  re- 
enforced.  The  7th  Division  had  no  better  luck.  One  of  its 
brigades,  the  22nd,  broke  through  the  German  lines  into  the 
Quarries,  and  reached  Cite  St.  Elie,  but  not  oeing  reen- 
forced,  it  was  compelled  to  withdraw.  The  attack  of  the 
1st  Corps  failed. 

The  4th  Corps  did  better.  The  objective  of  the  1st  Di- 
vision was  Hulluch,  and  that  of  the  15th  Division  Cite  St. 
Auguste,  while  the  47th  Division  was  ordered  to  secure  the 
right  flank  of  the  attacking  force.  The  latter  Division  car- 
ried out  its  mission  as  directed,  while  the  15th  Division,  ad- 
vancing with  great  elan,  pushed  through  Loos,  the  44th  Bri- 
gade going  over  Hill  70  to  Cite  St.  Auguste.  There  it  was 
heavily  counter-attacked,  and  not  being  supported,  fell  back 
behind  the  crest  of  Hill  70.  The  1st  Division  was  heavily 
engaged  on  its  way  to  Hulluch,  and  reinforcements  arriv- 
ing too  late,  it  had  to  fall  back  west  of  the  La  Bassee-Lens 
road.  The  net  result  of  the  attack  was  a  gain  of  from  4,000 
to  5,000  yards  of  depth  along  a  front  of  between  4  and  5 
miles. 

The  causes  of  failure  were  two.  The  preliminary  bom- 
bardment had  been  only  partially  effective,  many  of  the  Ger- 
man trenches  remaining  intact,  with  the  wire  entanglements 
uncut,  and  machine  guns  left  in  position.  There  were  not 
enough  guns  of  a  heavy  nature  brought  into  action,  and  the 
bombardment  was  not  sufficiently  prolonged.  The  second 
cause  of  failure  was  due  to  the  error  committed  in  placing 
the  reserve  troops,  the  nth  Corps  and  Guards  Division,  un- 
der the  Commander-in-Chief  instead  of  handing  them  over 
to  the  general  commanding  the  2nd  Army.  The  nth  Corps, 
consisting  of  two  divisions,  was  four  and  a  half  miles  be- 


THE  BIG  ALLIED  OFFENSIVE  309 

hind  the  fighting  line,  and  the  Guards  Division  still  further 
away.  These  troops  did  not  leave  their  rendezvous  till  9.30 
a.  m.,  and  then  it  was  too  late,  the  battle  being  practically 
over  before  midday.  If  they  had  been  thrown  into  the  fight- 
ing line  in  the  early  morning  they  might  have  turned  a 
failure  into  a  success. 

Simultaneously  with  this,  which  was  the  main  attack, 
other  attacks  were  made  north  of  the  La  Bassee  Canal,  and 
east  of  Ypres,  but  beyond  holding  the  enemy  and  diverting 
strong  bodies  of  reserve  troops  towards  these  points,  no  ad- 
vance was  made,  and  no  results  were  obtained.  The  attacks 
were  not  pushed  home,  and  were  only  undertaken  as  diver- 
sions. 

While  the  1st  British  Army  was  attacking  between  La 
Bassee  and  Lens  the  10th  French  Army,  under  General 
Foch's  direction,  drove  the  Germans  out  of  the  village  of 
Souchez,  and  then  advanced  towards  Givenchy,  gaining  a 
footing  on  Hill  119,  while  further  south  on  the  northeast  of 
Neuville  St.  Vaast  our  Allies  reached  the  farm  of  La  Folie. 
This  French  army  was  strongly  opposed  on  September  25th. 
and  was  unable  to  penetrate  into  the  German  lines  south  of 
Loos  as  far  as  the  British  troops  did  on  the  north  of  the 
village,  but  1,500  prisoners  were  taken,  and  Souchez  was 
left  well  in  the  rear. 

On  the  night  of  the  25th  the  Crown  Prince  of  Bavaria, 
who  was  in  command  of  the  army  opposing  Sir  John  French, 
brought  up  reserve  troops  from  Belgium,  and  began  a  series 
of  vigorous  counter-attacks  with  the  intention  of  regaining 
the  ground  he  had  lost.  Being  specially  apprehensive  about 
the  British  advance  towards  the  La  Bassee-Hulluch  road,  he 
concentrated  large  reinforcements  of  men  and  guns  north 
and  south  of  Haisnes,  and  succeeded  on  the  afternoon  of 
the  26th  in  recapturing  Fosse  8,  but  elsewhere  our  troops 
held  their  ground.  On  October  1st,  during  another  vio- 
lent counter-attack,  the  Germans  recovered  the  greater  part 
of  Fort  Hohenzollern.  On  October  8th  a  general  attack 
was  made  by  the  Germans  along  the  whole  Anglo-French 
line,  but  this  attack,  which  was  made  with  four  divisions, 


3io 


THE  BIG  ALLIED  OFFENSIVE 


was  everywhere  beaten  back  with  enormous  loss  to  the 
enemy. 

While  the  events  narrated  above  were  taking  place  in  Ar- 
tois  General  de  Castelnau  gained  a  notable  victory  in  Cham- 
pagne. After  a  heavy  artillery  bombardment  lasting  over 
three  days  the  French  infantry  were  launched  against  the 
German  first-line  trenches  extending  along  a  fifteen-mile 
front  from  Auberive  to  Ville  sur  Tourbe,  and  by  the  im- 
petuosity of  their  attack  carried  the  whole  of  the  enemy's 
entrenchments,  capturing  16,000  unwounded  prisoners  with 
200  officers  and  some  seventy  or  more  guns.  The  heaviest 
fighting  took  place  along  the  Souain-Somme  Py  road,  and 
north  of  Massiges,  where  the  Breton  and  Vandean  troops 
were  in  force.  North  of  Souain  was  the  division  of  General 
Marchand,  of  Fashoda  fame.  The  farm  of  Navarin,  which 
was  the  objective  of  this  division,  lies  on  the  summit  of  the 
plateau  between  Souain  and  Somme  Py,  and  to  reach  it  Gen- 
eral Marchand's  men  had  to  fight  their  way  through  two 
miles  of  German  trenches  and  field  redoubts;  but  they  swept 
over  the  barrier  with  an  elan  which  was  irresistible,  gain- 
ing the  position,  but  losing  their  gallant  leader,  who  had 
to  leave  the  field  wounded  at  the  moment  of  victory. 

After  this  memorable  battle  General  de  Castelnau  con- 
tinued his  offensive  unceasingly,  and  forced  his  way  into  the 
German  second  line  north  of  Navarin  farm  and  Massiges. 
On  October  5th,  after  another  terrific  bombardment,  the 
French  infantry  carried  by  assault  the  village  of  Tahure, 
and  reached  the  summit  of  Hill  192,  which  is  known  as  the 
Butte  de  Tahure,  and  which  the  Germans  regarded  as  in- 
vincible. After  losing  this  important  tactical  point  the  Ger- 
mans daily  tried  to  recover  it  by  means  of  violent  attacks, 
which  cost  them  many  lives,  but  without  any  result.  The  ar- 
tillery preponderance  obtained  by  the  French  was  the  de- 
termining factor  of  the  situation,  and  promised  well  for  fur- 
ther victories. 

The  French  objective  in  Champagne  was  the  Bazancourt- 
Challerange  railway,  which,  like  the  Lens-La  Bassee  railway 
in  Artois,  ran  behind  the  enemy's  positions,  and  was  the  main 
line  of  supply  for  the  German  Army.     The  French  on  the 


THE  BIG  ALLIED  OFFENSIVE  311 

Butte  de  Tahure  were  within  two  miles  of  this  railway,  and 
soon  began  to  make  it  untenable  with  their  gunfire  and  aero- 
planes. Their  object  was  to  reach  the  railway  and  force 
the  Germans  back  to  the  Aisne,  so  as  to  isolate  the  Crown 
Prince  from  General  Heeringen,  who  was  in  command  of  the 
army  facing  Rheims.  This  was  a  strategical  object  worth 
fighting  for,  and  they  went  a  long  way  towards  achieving  it. 

FRENCH  GOVERNMENTAL  STATEMENT 

During  September  26th  and  27th  we  succeeded  north  of 
Souain  and  Perthes  in  occupying  a  front  facing  north  and 
in  contact  with  the  German  second  line  along  a  stretch  of 
seven  and  a  half  miles.  The  ground  thus  conquered  repre- 
sented an  area  of  some  fifteen  and  a  half  square  miles,  and 
was  traversed  by  lines  of  trenches  graduated  to  a  great  depth. 
The  borders  of  the  woods  were  organized  for  defense,  and 
innumerable  subterranean  passages,  trenches,  and  parallels 
facilitated  a  resistance  foot  by  foot. 

We  overcame  all  these  obstacles,  imposing  our  ascendancy 
on  the  enemy,  and  progressing  from  trench  to  trench,  and 
on  our  way  seizing  batteries,  munition  depots,  and  material. 
Our  soldiers  were  out  to  conquer,  and  the  joy  of  knowing 
that  a  powerful  German  fortress  was  crumbling  in  the  face 
of  their  efforts  spurred  them  forward  with  greater  dash. 
Our  Generals  and  Colonels  took  up  their  posts  of  command 
in  the  shelter  of  the  German  officers'  huts,  and  the  casemates 
on  which  there  still  hung  notices,  "Stab  Bataillons,"  "Kom- 
pagnie  fiihrer."  The  soldiers  gayly  made  a  rapid  inventory 
of  the  dwellings  and  the  rustic  canteens  installed  in  the 
woods. 

Our  artillery  took  up  positions  in  the  open  country,  as 
in  the  days  of  war  of  movement.  Our  advance  progressed 
with  success,  for  continuing  which  great  honor  is  due  to  our 
troops,  in  particular  the  Franc-Comtois  and  Africains,  who 
had  assumed  the  task  of  taking  a  string  of  wooded  hills 
stretching  between  Auberive  and  Souain  to  the  north  Roman 
road.  The  Epine  de  Vedegrange  and  Hill  150  are  the  only 
points  which  mark  this  district  on  the  map.  It  was  there 
that  the  Germans  resisted  with  much  determination  in  one 


12 


THE  BIG  ALLIED  OFFENSIVE 


-of  their  systems  of  trenches.  Our  troops  advanced  by  suc- 
cessive bounds,  digging  themselves  in  after  each  rush,  so  as 
to  indicate  that  they  had  taken  possession  of  the  terrain. 
Thus  they  succeeded  in  reaching  the  enemy's  second  posi- 
tion at  this  point,  which  we  have  baptized  the  "parallel  of 
the  Epine  de  Vedegrange."  This  trench  extends  eastward 
unbroken  toward  Hill  193.  Our  military  vocabulary  fur- 
nishes many  names  for  it — "Parallel  of  the  wood  of  Chev- 
ron," "Trench  of  Lubeck."  Up  to  the  Navarin  farm,  fur- 
ther east,  it  is  named  "Trench  of  Kultur,"  "Trench  of 
Satyrs,"  and  "Trench  of  Pirates."  On  the  evening  of  the 
25th  we  had  not  attained  the  second  line  to  the  east  of  Nava- 
rin farm.  The  Germans  were  holding  out  in  the  pine  woods 
which  terrace  the  eastern  section  of  the  Souain  basin. 

The  next  day  our  troops,  who  had  gone  forward  west 
to  a  point  where  the  Souain-Tahure  road  traverses  the 
woods,  succeeded  in  joining  hands  with  those  installed  on 
Llill  193.  Thus  the  last  defenders  of  the  works  in  the  woods 
were  surrounded.     Here  we  made  nearly  2,000  prisoners. 

Meanwhile  our  African  troops  were  gaining  ground 
toward  the  north,  clearing  the  woods  and  taking  possession 
of  the  "Camp  of  Sadowa,"  which  contained  large  quantities 
of  material,  and  the  existence  of  which  had  already  been 
revealed  by  our  airmen.  Further  east  we  pushed  forward 
our  line,  installing  ourselves  on  the  summit  of  Hill  201, 
facing  the  Butte  of  Tahure,  on  which  the  enemy  dug  a  sec- 
ond line,  named  "Trench  of  the  Vistula."  An  attack  put  us 
in  possession  of  a  little  fort  at  the  extremity  of  the  latter. 

Along  the  remainder  of  the  front  the  pressure  was  kept 
up  by  violent  bombardments,  by  grenade  throwing,  and  by 
swift  attacks.  On  the  ''Main  de  Massiges"  ground  was  thus 
gained  by  a  sustained  action  of  the  colonial  infantry.  Al- 
ternating the  fire  of  the  heavy  artillery  and  the  field  guns 
with  assaults  by  grenadiers,  we  succeeded  greatly  in  increas- 
ing our  gain  of  September  25th  along  the  northern  portion 
of  the  promontory. 

Germans  surrendered  in  groups,  even  though  not  sur- 
rounded, so  tired  were  they  of  the  fight,  and  so  depressed 


THE  BIG  ALLIED  OFFENSIVE  313 

by  hunger  and  convinced  of  our  determination  to  continue 
our  effort  to  the  end. 

A  German  trench  stood  in  the  way  of  our  advance. 
Our  artillery  concentrated  its  fire  upon  it.  Toward  the  end 
of  the  afternoon  of  the  26th,  when  the  observation  officer 
suddenly  gave  the  order  to  cease  fire,  he  saw  the  Germans 
stand  up  on  the  crest  and  put  up  their  hands.  "Seventy- 
fives!  Send  a  screen  of  fire  behind,"  ordered  the  general 
commanding  the  division,  and  immediately  the  Germans  were 
to  be  seen  running  toward  our  lines,  while  our  colonial  in- 
fantry went  off  and  installed  themselves  in  the  trenches. 
There  they  stuck  up  the  pennants  with  which  they  had  di- 
rected our  artillery  fire  and  which  on  the  crest  torn  by  shells 
unfurled  themselves  like  glorious  standards. 

GERMAN  GOVERNMENTAL  STATEMENT 

October  4th. 

The  object  of  the  attack  was  to  drive  the  Germans  out 
of  France.  The  result  achieved  is  that  the  Germans  on  a 
front  of  about  840  kilometers,  at  one  place  23  kilometers, 
and  at  another  12  kilometers  wide  (and  at  this  latter  not 
by  any  soldierly  qualities  of  the  English  attack,  but  by  a 
successful  surprise  by  gas  attack),  have  been  pressed  back 
from  the  first  line  of  their  system  of  defense  into  their  sec- 
ond line,  which  is  not  their  last. 

After  a  careful  computation  the  French  losses  in  killed 
and  wounded  and  prisoners  are  at  least  130,000,  those  of  the 
English  60,000,  and  the  German  losses  are  not  one-fifth  of 
this  number. 

Whether  the  enemy  has  still  the  idea  of  attaining  his 
object  need  not  be  considered.  Anyway,  such  a  success 
fought  with  a  superiority  of  6  or  7  to  1  and  prepared  for 
after  many  months  of  work  on  war  material  in  the  factories 
of  half  the  world,  including  those  of  America,  cannot  be 
styled  a  "brilliant  victory."  Still  less  can  it  be  said  that 
the  attack  has  compelled  us  to  do  anything  which  was  not  in 
our  plans,  and  especially  to  direct  our  advance  against  the 
Russian  army  toward  him.  Apart  from  the  fact  that  a  cer- 
tain division  which  was  to  have  been  transported  away  from 


314 


THE  BIG  ALLIED  OFFENSIVE 


the  western  front  when  the  offensive  started  was  held  back, 
and  that  another  division  was  sent  away  in  its  stead  to  the 
place  where  the  former  should  have  gone,  the  attack  did  not 
cause  the  German  chief  army  administration  to  use  a  single 
soldier  anywhere  where  they  had  not  previously  intended 
to  use  him,  ariangements  having  long  before  been  settled. 
Moreover,  the  attack  has  not  been  carried  out  without  res- 
pite day  and  night;  neither  has  our  defense  been  pushed 
back  at  any  point  beyond  our  second  line.  Neither  has  the 
enemy  hindered  us  from  removing  our  reserve  troops  as 
safely  and  effectively  as  we  were  able  to  do  during  the  May 
offensive  to  the  north  of  Arras. 


Letter  Found  on  a  German  Officer  Slain  in  the  Champagne 

Assault 

September  26th. 

One  o'clock  in  the  morning.  At  7  it  will  have  been  sev- 
enty-two hours  since,  without  interruption,  we  have  been 
frightfully  bombarded — seventy-two  hours  of  endless, 
deafening  uproar,  which  even  the  steadiest  nerves  can  hardly 
endure ! 

I  was  ordered  into  the  trenches  as  an  observer  at  7  a.  m. 
Naturally,  telephone  lines  were  broken.  I  reached  the  posi- 
tion of  the  reserves  without  much  trouble,  their  trenches 
being  destroyed  only  here  and  there;  but  there  the  difficul- 
ties began. 

Mines  and  bombs  were  exploding  at  brief  intervals,  in- 
terspersed with  bullets  from  machine  guns.  From  that  point 
on  the  trenches  were  so  damaged  that  we  were  obliged  to 
crawl  on  all  fours. 

I  left  my  telephone  operator  and  went  ahead,  amid  un- 
interrupted cracklings,  the  bursting  of  grenades,  the  explo- 
sion of  shells,  the  whistling  of  bullets,  the  howling  of  shell 
fragments,  and  fogs  of  smoke.  By  holding  my  breath  be- 
hind my  respirator  I  got  to  a  point  where  a  trench  had  been 
repaired  thirty-five  times.  The  communication  trench  was 
completely  leveled.  Creeping  closer  and  closer  to  the  ground, 
I  arrived  at  the  second  trench,  ten  yards  behind  the  first. 


THE  BIG  ALLIED  OFFENSIVE  315 

Of  the  latter  nothing  remains.  The  second  trench  is  just 
deep  enough  to  kneel  in. 

Profiting  from  a  period  of  relative  calm,  I  cast  a  glance 
ahead.  Our  barbed-wire  fences  are  destroyed.  I  signal 
our  batteries,  which  resume  a  rapid  fire.  Then  I  creep  back 
to  get  my  telephone  operator.  It  takes  me  four  hours  to 
cover  ground  which  ordinarily  could  have  been  covered  in 
twenty-five  minutes. 

This  is  becoming  frightful.  An  explosion  throws  me 
against  a  wall  of  a  trench.  A  Lieutenant  tells  me  a  shell 
struck  in  his  shelter  also.  I  rush  out  and  see  that  all  the 
bombproof s  on  the  slope  are  burning.  A  shell  striking  an 
ammunition  magazine  causes  a  formidable  explosion.  The 
French  keep  on  firing  into  the  fire.     How  I  hate  them! 

How  I  admire  the  French  artillery !  They  are  the  mas- 
ter gunners.  We  really  cannot  imitate  them,  I  regret  to  say. 
Continuing  to  fire  into  the  fire,  the  enemy  provokes  a  more 
violent  explosion  than  the  preceding  ones. 

God  knows  what  they  have  blown  up  now!  From  this 
moment  I  have  lost  all  sensation  of  fear. 


RUSSIA'S  DESPERATE  RALLY 

THE  CZAR  TAKES  PERSONAL  COMMAND  OF  HIS  ARMIES 

SEPTEMBER   5TH 

CZAR  NICHOLAS  II. 

AN  ANONYMOUS  HUNGARIAN  OFFICER 

EDWIN  GREWE 

On  November  15,  1915,  General  Russky,  then  in  command  of  the 
Russian  armies,  issued  an  announcement  pointing  out  that  the  Ger- 
mans had  been  driven  back  in  several  places  during  the  past  month. 
"By  thus  failing  to  advance,"  said  the  resolute  general,  "the  Germans 
are  really  retreating." 

The  words  were  true.  Germany  had  reached  the  limit  to  which 
she  could,  or  at  least  to  which  she  judged  she  safely  could,  carry  her 
advance.  On  September  5th  the  Czar,  recognizing  Russia's  desperate 
need,  assumed  personal  command  of  his  armies  on  the  German  front. 
The  former  commander,  his  uncle  Nicholas,  was  transferred  to  take 
command  of  the  Turkish  front  in  the  Caucasus.  This  did  not  mean 
that  the  Czar  really  directed  his  armies,  but  only  that  by  his  presence 
he  encouraged  them,  and  that  the  traitors  and  "profiteers"  in  office 
who  had  done  so  much  toward  the  betrayal  oc  their  fighting  coun- 
trymen dared  no  longer  act  so  openly  against  their  country. 

Russian  resistance  now  strengthened,  and  the  advance  of  the  Ger- 
mans slackened  as  they  entered  real  Russia  and  must  struggle  across 
its  vast  swamps.  Their  huge  artillery  became  too  heavy  to  trans- 
port, and  without  it  they  found  the  Russians  could  still  fight  them 
with  equal  strength.  So  Russia  was  saved  by  her  marshes  and  her 
courage.  At  the  end  of  October  the  fighting  line  extended  from  Riga, 
which  had  withstood  all  assaults  in  the  north,  to  Dvinsk  strongly 
fortified  on  the  Dvina  River,  then  to  Pinsk  east  of  Brest-Litovsk,  and 
then  to  Rovno  in  the  south  where  General  Ivanoff  gained  repeated 
Russian  successes  as  early  as  September. 

BY  NICHOLAS  II. 
Proclamation  Addressed  to  the  Grand  Duke  Nicholas 

AT  the  beginning  of  the  war  I  was  unavoidably  prevented 
from  following  the  inclination  of  my  soul  to  put  myself 
at  the  head  of  the  army.  That  was  why  I  intrusted  you 
with  the  Commandership-in-Chief  of  all  the  land  and  sea 
forces. 

Under  the  eyes  of  the  whole  of  Russia  your  Imperial 

316 


RUSSIA'S  DESPERATE  RALLY  317 

Highness  has  given  proof  during  the  war  of  steadfast  brav- 
ery which  caused  a  feeling  of  profound  confidence,  and 
called  forth  the  sincere  good  wishes  of  all  who  followed 
your  operations  through  the  inevitable  vicissitudes  of  fortune 
of  war. 

My  duty  to  my  country,  which  has  been  intrusted  to  me 
by  God,  impels  me  to-day,  when  the  enemy  has  penetrated 
into  the  interior  of  the  Empire,  to  take  the  supreme  com- 
mand of  the  active  forces  and  to  share  with  my  army  the 
fatigues  of  war,  and  to  safeguard  with  it  Russian  soil  from 
the  attempts  of  the  enemy. 

The  ways  of  Providence  are  inscrutable,  but  my  duty 
and  my  desire  determine  me  in  my  resolution  for  the  good 
of  the  State. 

The  invasion  of  the  enemy  on  the  Western  front  neces- 
sitates the  greatest  possible  concentration  of  the  civil  and 
military  authorities,  as  well  as  the  unification  of  the  com- 
mand in  the  field,  and  has  turned  our  attention  from  the 
southern  front.  At  this  moment  I  recognize  the  necessity 
of  your  assistance  and  counsels  on  our  southern  front,  and 
I  appoint  you  Viceroy  of  the  Caucasus  and  Commander- 
in-Chief  of  the  valiant  Caucasian  Army. 

I  express  to  your  Imperial  Highness  my  profound  grati- 
tude and  that  of  the  country  for  your  labors  during  the  war. 

[This  proclamation  by  the  Czar  was,  on  October  23rd,  re- 
enforced  by  the  following  official  statement :] 

From  May  till  October  the  Russian  Army  was  subjected 
to  uninterrupted  blows  along  a  front  of  700  miles.  The 
Austro-Germans  applied  every  possible  means,  not  excepting 
such  as  are  forbidden  by  international  treaties,  in  order  to 
increase  the  pressure  against  us.  Masses  of  their  troops 
were  flung  against  this  front  and  sent  to  destruction  regard- 
less of  losses.  Military  history  does  not  afford  another 
example  of  such  pressure. 

During  these  months  of  continuous  and  prolonged  action 
the  high  qualities  and  mettle  of  our  troops  under  the  diffi- 
culties and  arduous  conditions  of  the  retreat  were  demon- 
strated afresh.     Notwithstanding  his  obstinacy  in  fighting 


318  RUSSIA'S  DESPERATE  RALLY 

and  his  persistency  in  carrying  out  maneuvers,  the  en- 
emy is  still  confronted  by  an  army  which  fully  retains  its 
strength,  morale,  and  its  ability,  not  only  to  offer  a  stanch 
and  successful  resistance,  but  to  assume  the  offensive  and 
inflict  blows  which  have  been  demonstrated  by  the  events 
of  recent  days.  This  affords  the  best  proof  that  the  Aus- 
tro-Germans  failed  to  destroy,  or  even  to  disorganize,  our 
army. 

Seeing  that  they  failed  in  that  effort  during  the  five 
months  which  were  most  favorable  to  them,  it  would  be  im- 
possible for  them  to  repeat  the  Galician  and  Vistula  exploits 
now  that  the  successes  of  the  Allies  in  the  west  have  com- 
plicated the  strategical  position.  The  crisis  has  passed  favor- 
ably for  us.  We  issued  safely  from  the  difficult  position 
in  the  advanced  Vistula  theater,  where  we  were  enveloped 
on  three  sides,  and  now  stand  based  upon  the  center  of  our 
empire,  unexhausted  by  the  war. 

It  is  true  that  there  is  still  much  fierce  and  determined 
fighting  ahead.  There  may  be  movements  rearward,  but 
there  will  certainly  be  advances  also.  Our  army  lives  in 
the  expectation  of  a  general  offensive  and  looks  with  full 
confidence  to  the  armies  of  its  allies.  It  will  march  boldly 
and  cheerfully  forward,  conscious  that  in  so  doing  it  is  de- 
fending the  interests  of  our  country  and  the  interests  of  our 
allies.  Stern  struggle  with  the  forces  of  nature  has  schooled 
the  Russians  to  hardships  and  ingrained  in  them  the  in- 
stinct to  hasten  to  the  succor  and  relief  of  a  brother  in  need. 
Hence  an  appeal  from  our  allies  will  always  find  a  warm  re- 
sponse from  the  Russian  Army. 

LETTER    FROM    AN    HUNGARIAN    OFFICER    ON    THE    RUSSIAN 

FRONT 

Every  tree  is  a  little  islet  standing  out  of  the  gloomy 
marshland,  and  shallow  lakes  which  extend  for  mile  after 
mile.  The  roads  are  inundated  by  the  water,  which  has 
risen  high  owing  to  the  floods  of  rain,  and  from  the  mis- 
erable cottages,  which  at  intervals  are  to  be  seen  partly 
submerged  along  the  highways,  strange  looking  men  with 
long  beards  and  thick,  matted  hair,  mostly  woodcutters  and 


RUSSIA'S  DESPERATE  RALLY  319 

others  earning  a  precarious  living  from  the  products  of  the 
surrounding  wilderness,  creep  out  and  stare  with  amaze- 
ment at  the  Austrian  and  German  cavalrymen. 

According  to  the  figures  almost  half  of  the  territory  is 
covered  by  wet,  impassable,  and  uncultivated  forest,  wooded 
territory,  most  of  it  being  useless,  bushy,  and  impenetrable. 
The  ground  itself  is  divided  into  different  kinds  of  marshy 
lands,  impassable  muddy  districts,  immense  weedy  and 
grassy  territories,  also  regions  covered  by  some  kind  of  more 
solid  grassy  substance,  and  other  thousands  and  thousands 
of  acres  of  land  perpetually  under  water. 

The  resources  of  this  gigantic  wilderness  are  naturally 
very  scanty,  and  the  number  of  inhabitants  very  small.  One 
may  not  even  think  of  any  military  comfort  of  billeting  or 
the  kind,  and  camping  in  the  open  air,  on  account  of  the 
climate,  the  lack  of  water,  and  owing  to  the  milliards  of 
most  dangerous  insects  and  snakes,  seems  to  be  an  impos- 
sible undertaking.  How  an  army  of  many  hundred  thou- 
sands of  men  could  undertake  an  advance  movement  on 
this  marshy  ground  covered  with  thick  forest,  mud,  and 
water  is  almost  unimaginable,  for  only  the  hilly  districts 
contain  roads  used  by  pedestrians  or  the  Russian  ponies 
used  to  these  kinds  of  roads.  The  climate  itself  is  unbear- 
able for  those  used  to  healthy  and  dry  districts ;  the  vapor- 
ings  of  the  marshes  are  liable  to  cause  fever  and  typhoid. 

BY  EDWIN  GREWE 

In  the  German  campaign  against  Russia  the  Germans 
had  not  unlimited  time  to  spare.  Time  would  merely  repair 
the  Russian  strength;  it  was  essential  to  Germany  to  break 
it  beyond  repair.  The  time  remaining  in  191 5  before  the 
autumn  rains  was  very  short  for  any  such  decisive  result. 
At  the  beginning  of  September  it  might  be  put  at  six  weeks, 
or  eight  weeks  at  most.  Consequently,  in  the  early  part  of 
September,  with  the  advantages  that  had  been  recorded  in 
hand,  the  Germans  pushed  their  effort  to  the  utmost.  On 
September  1st  they  reached  the  outer  defenses  of  Grodno, 
and  next  day  stormed  it,  though  the  small  number  of  pris- 
oners they  took  is  an  evidence  that  the  Russians  made  no 


320  RUSSIA'S  DESPERATE  RALLY 

strong  resistance  but  began  to  retreat  when  the  outer  forts 
collapsed.  Farther  north  they  offered  more  determined  re- 
sistance between  Grodno  and  Vilna  at  Orany,  which  is  on 
the  railway  line,  but  the  fact  was  only  significant  that  the 
whole  line  between  Warsaw  and  Vilna  was  now  gone. 

In  order  to  prevent  reinforcements  being  moved  down, 
von  Below  renewed  his  attacks  in  the  Riga  district  and 
stormed   the  bridgehead   at   Friedrichstadt  on   the   Dvina. 

At  this,  almost  the  blackest  moment  in  Russian  affairs,  a 
change  was  announced  in  the  leadership  of  the  Russian 
armies  which  took  most  people  by  surprise.  The  Grand 
Duke  Nicholas,  who  had  been  compared  a  year  before  by 
Mr.  Balfour  to  the  Prince  Eugene  of  Marlborough's  cam- 
paigns, was  transferred  to  the  command  in  the  Caucasus, 
and  the  Czar,  with  General  Alexieff  as  Chief  of  Staff,  as- 
sumed supreme  command  of  the  Russian  armies. 

The  days  immediately  following  the  announcement  of 
the  Czar's  decision  brought  little  improvement  in  the  north- 
ern situation,  though  victory  in  Galicia,  to  which  fuller 
reference  will  be  made,  was  significant  that  the  German 
eggs  were  all  being  put  into  one  basket.  They  were  now 
fighting  east  of  Grodno,  and,  despite  a  vicious  counter-at- 
tack of  the  Russians  at  Skidel,  were  beginning  to  thrust 
their  forces  into  such  positions  north  and  south  of  the 
Vilna  railway  junction  as  to  create  a  new  salient,  in  which, 
as  in  previous  loops,  they  hoped  to  lasso  some  considerable 
portion  of  the  Russian  forces.  On  paper  their  chances  of 
doing  so  seemed  more  favorable  than  at  any  previous  junc- 
ture in  this  summer  and  autumn  campaign,  because  the  Rus- 
sian retreating  units  were  in  a  state  of  disorder  which  was 
consequent  on  the  events  that  have  been  described,  and  there 
was  no  part  of  their  line  from  which  reinforcements  could 
profitably  be  drawn  to  help  any  other. 

The  Germans,  on  September  7th,  were  almost  within 
striking  distance  of  Vilna,  at  Novo  Troiki;  farther  south, 
they  took  Volkovysk,  which  is  east  of  Grodno,  and  is  the 
junction  of  the  railway  lines  from  Grodno  and  Bielostok; 
and  a  few  days  later  they  repaired  their  check  at  Skidel  by 
capturing  the  town.     They  had  now  the  essential  railway 


RUSSIA'S  DESPERATE  RALLY  321 

communications  south  of  Vilna  and  the  main  roads ;  and  they 
had  cut  the  railway  north  of  Vilna,  between  Vilna  and 
Dvinsk,  at  Svientsiany.  They  followed  this  up  by  a  con- 
centration of  large  forces  on  this  section  north  of  Vilna, 
and  laid  the  foundations  of  their  attempt  to  encircle  Vilna 
and  the  forces  still  holding  the  railway  line  there.  That 
was  on  September  13th.  On  the  12th  Lord  Kitchener,  in  a 
review  of  the  military  situation,  declared  to  the  House  of 
Lords  that  in  his  belief  the  Germans  would  prove  before 
the  end  of  the  next  month  to  have  "shot  their  bolt."  It 
was  a  prediction  which  caused  a  good  deal  of  surprise  in 
England,  and  in  Berlin  it  was  received  with  derision;  but 
events  proved  that  Lord  Kitchener  was  a  prophet  whose  in- 
sight was  founded  on  a  right  appreciation  of  the  weakening 
effect  of  the  German  strivings. 

The  Germans  had  failed  to  advance  quickly  enough  to 
capture  any  considerable  number  of  Russians  retreating 
from  Grodno.  The  prospect  of  capturing  those  who  might 
be  forced  to  retreat  from  Vilna  represented  their  last  chance, 
and  they  accelerated  their  movements  to  the  utmost  to  seize 
it.  The  taking  of  Novo  Troiki,  a  few  miles  east  of  Vilna, 
and  Orany,  more  to  the  southeast,  represented  the  frontal 
grip  on  the  salient;  the  seizure  of  Skidel  after  the  heavy 
righting  for  it  and  the  subsequent  advance  eastwards  of  that 
place  formed  the  southern  prong  of  the  pincers ;  the  massing 
of  troops  in  the  line  between  Dvinsk  and  Vilna  were  prece- 
dent to  the  application  of  the  northern  prong.  On  Monday, 
the  13th,  the  capture  by  the  Germans  of  Podbrozie  and 
Novo  Svenziany  on  the  railway  line  north  of  Vilna  must 
have  convinced  the  Russian  command  that  the  moment  for 
the  complete  evacuation  of  Vilna  had  arrived.  Stores,  ma- 
terial, and  machinery  had  been  removed  long  before :  the 
problem  was  the  removal  of  the  main  body  of  troops  from 
the  entrance  of  the  salient. 

While  this  removal  was  in  progress  a  new  menace  was 
developing  in  the  north.  Masses  of  German  and  Austrian 
cavalry  began,  on  September  15th,  to  pour  over  the  region 
of  Svenziany,  and  beyond,  to  Widzy.  It  has  been  estimated 
that  their  numbers  were  about  40,000  and  that  they  were 

w„  VOL.  III.— 21. 


322 


RUSSIA'S  DESPERATE  RALLY 


accompanied  by  140  guns.  They  swarmed  all  over  the  re- 
gion which  lies  in  the  triangle  formed  by  the  two  railways, 
one  of  which  goes  northward  from  Vilna  to  Dvinsk  and 
the  other  eastwards  from  Vilna  to  Minsk.  It  was  the  last- 
named  which  they  aimed  to  get  astride,  and  by  Friday,  the 
17th,  they  had  arrived  at  Vileika  on  the  Vilia,  just  to  the 
north  of  the  railway  junction  Moldecezno.  The  Russians 
before  and  during  the  raid  had  been  lined  up  along  the  line 
of  the  River  Vilia. 

This  cavalry  raid,  imposing  as  it  was  on  paper,  and  dar- 
ing as  it  was  in  conception,  failed  of  its  effect.  It  never  got 
near  enough  to  Moldecezno  to  close  the  gap  here ;  and  mean- 
while the  great  body  of  the  Russian  troops  were  steadily 
retreating,  not  along  the  railway  line  but  along  the  great 
main  road  to  Minsk,  which  lies  south  of  the  railway  and 
forms  an  acute  angle  with  it  at  Vilna.  Thus  the  northern 
prong  of  the  pincers,  of  which  the  Germans  had  sought  to 
make  a  long  arm,  proved  too  weak  for  its  purpose.  The 
southern  prong,  which  was  of  stronger  stuff,  could  not 
move  its  men  fast  enough.  They  forced  their  way  past 
Skidel  to  Mosty,  and  though  they  were  only  a  day's  march 
from  Lida,  another  junction  which  would  have  proved  a 
danger  point  to  the  Russian  retreat,  they  could  not  fight 
their  way  i  toss  that  narrow  space  in  time.  They  got  as 
far  as  Slonim  by  the  18th,  but  that  was  much  too  far  south. 
Thus  the  lower  prong  of  the  pincers  could  not  close  up, 
and  by  September  18th  the  failure  of  the  encircling  move- 
ment was  sealed. 

Vilna,  of  course,  was  lost  to  the  Russians,  and  the  rail- 
way line  which  went  with  it,  but  yet  again  the  salient  had 
been  straightened  out,  and  there  was  little  prospect  that  an- 
other would  be  formed.  The  failure  had  cost  the  Germans 
more  than  the  attempt  was  worth.  The  Russians  had  struck 
hard  at  the  cavalry  at  Vilecka  on  the  23rd,  capturing  men 
a»d  eight  guns ;  they  inflicted  other  checks  on  them  at  Smor- 
gon  and  along  the  line  of  the  Vilia  while  they  made  their 
own  retreat  good. 

This  plan,  for  which  the  credit  or  the  blame  must  be  as- 
signed to  von   Hindenburg,   sums   up  the  more  northerly 


RUSSIA'S  DESPERATE  RALLY  323 

operations,  except  for  heavy  and  continuous  fighting,  which 
continued  long  after  the  movement  was  ended,  at  Dvinsk, 
and  similar  operations  nearer  Riga. 

In  the  middle  zone  Prince  Leopold  of  Bavaria  had  ad- 
vanced as  fast  as  the  Russians  would  let  him,  eastwards  of 
Bielostok.  An  attempt  on  his  part  to  hasten  their  retire- 
ment met  with  a  damaging  check  at  Slonim;  but  on  the 
whole  the  German  line  from  Vilna  to  the  marshes  progressed 
slowly  eastwards.  Von  Mackensen's  part  at  this  time  was 
subordinate  to  that  of  von  Hindenburg.  His  was  the  sec- 
tion which  joined  up  the  Germans  of  the  north  to  the  Ger- 
mans of  the  south  across  the  Pripet  Marshes. 

If  the  advance  eastwards  of  Prince  Leopold  and  of  von 
Mackensen  had  been  slow  and  unproductive  of  much  be- 
yond wasted  territory  and  desolate  marsh,  the  German-Aus- 
trians  in  Galicia  south  of  the  Pripet  Marshes  fared  a  good 
deal  worse.  The  Pripet  River  gives  its  name  to  a  vast 
basin  of  50,000  square  miles  of  sluggish  tributary  rivers 
overflowing  into  vast  swamps.  More  difficult  fighting- 
ground  can  hardly  be  imagined.  It  is  the  Russian  version 
of  the  Masurian  Lakes.  Theoretically,  this  vast  region  cut 
the  fighting  lines  and  the  armies  operating  between  them 
into  two  halves.  In  practice,  connection  could  be  maintained 
by  the  Russians  during  much  of  the  operations,  along  the 
railway  line  running  from  Vilna.  The  occupation  of  Pinsk 
by  the  Germans  interrupted  this  intercommunication,  and 
Ivanoff's  southern  armies  then  became  an  independent  unit 
served  by  the  Kiev  railway.  His  was  a  splendid  isolation, 
which  never  ceased  to  give  the  Germans  trouble;  and  even 
in  the  darkest  hours  of  the  Russian  retirement  north  of  the 
Pripet  his  soldiers  were  constantly  able  to  respond  with  a 
victory  as  a  consolation.  These  operations  were  part  of  the 
Russian  strategic  plan  of  never  entirely  losing  touch  with 
Rumania  and  their  former  conquests  in  Galicia. 


BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS 

SHE   SEEKS  THE  DESTRUCTION  OF  SERBIA 

OCTOBER    I ITH 

A.  MENSHEKOFF  PRINCESS  RADZIWILL 

PRIME  MINISTER  RADOSLAVOFF 

ITALIAN  PRESS  DISPATCH 

We  do  not  need  to  ask  why  Bulgaria  entered  the  Great  War.  Her 
prime  minister,  M.  Radoslavoff,  was  very  frank  about  it,  and  we  give 
here  his  official  announcement  to  his  people.  He  tells  them  it  will  be 
good  business,  that  he  is  convinced  Germany  is  going  to  win ;  and 
moreover  he  has  tried  bargaining  with  both  sides  and  Germany  makes 
him  much  better  offers  of  extra  territory  than  the  Allies  can  afford  to. 
In  this  last  statement  the  Bulgarian  premier  is  quite  right.  Germany 
compelled  Turkey  to  surrender  some  territory  to  Bulgaria  at  once, 
and  promised  her  rule  over  most  of  unhappy  Serbia  as  well.  The 
Allies  could  make  no  such  reckless  gifts  of  lordship  over  alien  peo- 
ples. 

In  other  words,  the  Bulgarian  leaders  plunged  eagerly  into  the 
partnership  of  greed  and  conquest.  Both  the  prime  minister  and 
his  chief,  King  Ferdinand,  seem  to  have  assumed  that  everybody  con- 
cerned in  the  War  was  equally  venal,  equally  murderous,  as  them- 
selves. There  was,  however,  an  opposition  party  in  Bulgaria,  who 
disapproved  this  course;  and  that  the  fact  may  not  be  overlooked,  we 
give  here  a  noted  Italian  dispatch  describing  the  protest  of  the  oppo- 
sition leaders  to  the  k.'ng.  This  King  Ferdinand  was  not  himself  a 
Bulgarian.  He  was  a  member  of  the  ruling  family  of  Coburg,  a  Ger- 
man state,  and  had  been  forced  upon  Bulgaria  by  the  western  Powers 
when  the  Balkan  kingdom  was  released  from  Turkish  vassalage. 
Neither  was  Ferdinand  a  mere  figure-head  like  some  western  kings ; 
he  was  the  real  ruler  of  his  state. 

Bulgaria,  as  our  previous  volumes  have  told,  had  bitter  reason  for 
enmity  against  the  other  Balkan  states,  and  especially  against  Serbia ; 
as  they  had  all  leagued  against  her  in  the  last  Balkan  war  (1913). 
when  her  ambitious  king  had  attempted  to  override  them  and  seize 
the  lordship  of  the  Balkans.  Having  failed  in  that  larger  scheme, 
Ferdinand  was  now  willing  to  rule  the  region  as  Germany's  viceroy. 
As  to  the  eternal  territorial  disputes  between  Bulgaria  and  Serbia,  the 
unhappy  fact  was  that  the  two  races  had  become  so  intermingled  dur- 
ing the  centuries  of  Turkish  conquest  that  no  man  could  have  drawn 
boundary  lines  and  said,  these  regions  hold  Serbian  people,  those  Bul- 
garian. Historically,  the  Serbs  had  ruled  almost  the  entire  peninsula 
at  one  time,  and  the  Bulgars  at  another.  So  intense  had  now  become 
the  rivalry  between  the  two,  that  either  people  might  have  been  guilty 

324 


BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS    325 

of    rejoicing   over   the   annihilation    of    the    other.     To    Bulgaria   had 
come  the  chance  to  put  her  hatred  into  action. 

As  to  the  other  states  among  the  Allies,  the  one  which  felt  most 
aggrieved  by  Bulgaria's  action  was  Russia.  Her  feeling  and  her  claim 
to  Bulgarian  loyalty  is  here  stated  by  two  of  her  writers,  M.  Menshe- 
koff,  the  well-known  conservative  republican  leader,  and  Princess 
Catharine  Radziwill,  the  shrewdly  observant  lady  of  the  court,  re- 
tailing the  court  gossip. 

BY  A..  MENSHEKOFF 

A  FOURTH  front  has  been  presented.  War  is  declared 
on  Bulgaria.  For  us — the  old  generation  of. Rus- 
sians, who  well  remember  the  time  when  there  was  no  such 
thing  as  Bulgaria,  when  in  her  place  were  only  Turkish 
raiders,  it  is  especially  hard  to  think  of  this  fratricidal  war. 
The  war  for  Bulgaria's  freedom  in  1877  deeply  shook  all 
Russia,  and  even  that  part  of  our  youth  too  young  to  go 
forth  to  the  front,  took  a  most  ardent  unreserved  part  in 
waging  the  combat.  That  war  was  undertaken  by  Russia 
for  no  advantage  or  conquest,  but  with  a  view  of  freeing 
the  Slav  subjects  from  the  Turkish  yoke  and  persecution, 
threatening  them  with  total  destruction.  The  Bashibazooks, 
who  soon  after  the  outbreak  of  the  war  overran  defense- 
less Bulgaria,  subjected  the  Bulgars,  their  wives  and  chil- 
dren to  ruthless  death  and  destruction.  Previous  to  an  at- 
tempt at  freeing  the  Bulgars,  Russia  had  to  save  them  from 
an  imminent  death.  That  the  threat  of  total  destruction 
was  not  merely  a  threat  is  amply  proved  by  the  present 
wholesale  murder  of  the  Armenians,  which  still  goes  on  in 
those  outlying  villages  not  as  yet  reached  by  our  Caucasian 
troops.  The  saving  of  2,000,000  Bulgars  from  certain  death 
cost  us,  even  according  to  Bulgarian  figures,  200,000  lives, 
and  two  milliards  in  money. 

Of  course,  we  had  every  right  to  expect  that  the  little 
Slav  nation,  virtually  dragged  by  us  from  the  jaws  of  a 
waiting  grave  and  returned  to  a  life  of  right  and  freedom, 
would  remain  with  us — united  in  heart  and  mind  for  a  long 
time  to  come,  if  not  forever.  It  is  useless  to  say  that  we 
made  a  bitter  mistake.  The  mistake  we  made  was  already 
known  to  those  Russian  heroes  who  fought  under  the  banners 
of  Radyetsky,   Gurko,  and  Skobelyoff,  covering  Bulgaria 


326    BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS 

with  their  bodies  and  drenching  her  soil  with  their  blood. 
Many  of  the  officers  and  men  coming  home  from  the  war 
of  1877  had  a  great  deal  to  say  about  the  treatment  they 
received  at  the  hands  of  our  "little  brothers." 

Having  learned  to  know  the  Mussulmans  and  Bulgars 
alike,  many  of  our  warriors  showed  a  decided  preference 
for  the  manly  and  honest  character  of  the  Turk,  as  compared 
with  the  evasive  and  shrewd  traits  of  our  co-religionists. 
Apparently  the  500  years  of  slavery  did  not  fail  to  effect  a 
decided  change  in  the  Slav  blood,  of  which  little,  indeed,  runs 
through  the  veins  of  the  present-day  Bulgars. 

By  what  miracle  has  Germany  accomplished  the  subju- 
gation, by  peaceful  means,  of  the  monarchs  and  Govern- 
ments of  Austria-Hungary,  Turkey,  and  Bulgaria?  Some 
great  and  tempting  concessions  were  undoubtedly  offered 
by  the  Governments  of  Central  Europe,  and,  like  scattered 
robbers  gradually  flocking  in  the  well-organized  band,  Tur- 
key and  Bulgaria  hastened  to  throw  their  fortunes  in  with 
that  of  the  Teutonic  powers.  They  are  clearly  tempted  with 
the  outlook  of  a  huge  world  robbery,  Bulgaria  swayed 
from  side  to  side  for  a  whole  year.  But  when  she  saw  the 
Germans,  according  to  the  Bulgarian  Premier  Radoslavoff, 
"capture  a  great  strip  of  the  enemy's  territory,  without  losing 
one  foot  of  their  soil,"  the  argument  advanced  was  final 
and  decisive. 

The  Government,  which  came  into  life  thirty-seven  years 
ago,  now  joined  hands  with  the  highway  nations  of  Europe, 
and  together  with  them  it  will  undoubtedly  suffer  a  ter- 
rible fate.  A  hunger  for  the  property  belonging  to  other  peo- 
ples, the  ambition  to  set  up  the  Bulgarian  crown  supreme 
in  the  entire  Balkan  Peninsula,  a  desire  not  to  give  Russia 
her  right  of  way  to  her  only  outlet  to  the  ocean — here  is 
the  Bulgarian  plot  in  a  nutshell.  This  we  must  realize  as  a 
fact  and  deal  with  it  accordingly. 

BY   PRINCESS   RADZIWILL 

The  fact  that  Bulgaria  threw  in  her  lot  at  last  with 
Germany  was  not  viewed  in  Russia  with  great  surprise.  Pub- 
lic opinion  had  expected  that  something  of  the  kind  would 


BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS    327 

happen  ever  since  King  Ferdinand  had  begun  to  exhibit  his 
German  sympathies  and  to  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  the  advice  which 
the  Allies  had  tried  to  give  him.  Relations  between  the 
cabinets  of  Petrograd  and  of  Sofia  had  been  strained  by  the 
Balkan  wars,  when  Serbia  had  won  in  Russia  the  sympa- 
thies which,  by  her  conduct,  Bulgaria  had  lost. 

M.  Sazonof  hoped  against  hope  that  wisdom  would  pre- 
vail among  the  Bulgarian  politicians,  and  that  even  if  the 
King  were  determined  to  throw  in  his  lot  with  that  of  the 
German  States  and  with  Austria-Hungary,  the  secular  en- 
emy of  the  Slav  cause,  his  advisers  and  ministers  would  not 
allow  him  to  embark  oh  such  a  suicidal  policy.  Unfortu- 
nately these  hopes  proved  entirely  false,  partly  on  account 
of  the  weak  diplomacy  of  the  Russian  representative  at  the 
court  of  Sofia,  M.  Savinsky,  who  was  anything  but  a  states- 
man, and  who  instead  of  giving  his  whole  attention  to  the 
difficult  political  situation  of  Bulgaria  preferred  spending 
his  time  playing  tennis  and  flirting  with  fair  ladies.  He 
had  been  a  great  favorite  in  his  circle  at  Petrograd,  where 
he  had  taken  himself  much  too  seriously,  and  at  Stockholm, 
previous  to  his  appointment  in  Sofia,  he  had  been  greatly 
petted  by  society.  He  was  absolutely  no  match  for  King 
Ferdinand,  who  did  not  even  consider  it  a  triumph  to  hood- 
wink him.  By  the  disquieting  reports  which  M.  Savinsky 
sent  to  his  immediate  chiefs,  he  lured  them  on  to  a  false 
security  that  allowed  the  crafty  Coburger  to  commit  trea- 
son the  moment  he  thought  he  could  do  so  without  risk. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  more  mismanaged  affair 
than  the  Balkan  crisis.  Bulgaria  ought  to  have  been  per- 
suaded into  accepting  the  conditions  offered  to  her,  instead 
of  being  merely  irritated.  Action  should  have  been  taken 
instead  of  letting  things  drift  until  it  became  impossible  to 
improve  them,  or  to  remedy  the  decisions  taken  by  the  un- 
scrupulous ruler  of  an  unscrupulous  people.  But  the  Rus- 
sian Foreign  Office  always  kept  a  latent  feeling  of  kindness 
for  Bulgaria,  and  never  quite  realized  that  all  its  efforts  to 
win  her  as  an  ally  had  not  only  failed,  but  had  had  the 
opposite  influence.  Bulgaria  did  not  care  any  longer  for 
Russia;  it  is  to  be  doubted  whether  she  had  ever  cared  for 


328    BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS 

her  at  all.  Bulgaria  was  ambitious;  Bulgaria  had  dreams 
about  Constantinople,  which  she  considered  as  her  future 
possession,  and  knowing  that  Russia  would  prove  a  serious 
rival  for  her  in  that  direction,  she  aspired  to  liberate  herself 
from  any  obligations  in  regard  to  her  old  patron,  whom  she 
began  to  hate  as  events  unfolded  themselves  in  the  Near 
East,  with  a  hatred  the  more  ferocious  that  it  was  absolutely 
unjustified.  Russian  influence,  which  in  spite  of  official 
opinion  in  Petrograd,  had  never  been  firmly  established  in 
Bulgaria,  and  which,  in  his  brief  day  of  power,  Prince  Alex- 
ander of  Battenberg  had  attempted  to  shake  off,  was  quite 
dead  when  the  Great  War  began;  the  Turk  had  far  more 
chance  to  be  listened  to  at  Sofia  than  M.  Sazonof. 

Nevertheless,  there  existed  still  in  Petrograd  enthusiastic 
though  weak-minded  people  who  could  not  reconcile  them- 
selves to  the  accomplished  facts  of  Bulgaria's  misdeeds.  It 
was  partly  due  to  this  foolish  faction  that  a  considerable 
portion  of  Russian  society  felt  that  we  ought  not  to  draw 
the  sword  against  those  Slav  brethren,  or  bratouschki,  whom, 
earlier,  we  had  delivered  from  the  Turkish  yoke. 

To  many,  therefore,  the  treason  of  Bulgaria,  bound  as 
she  ought  to  have  been  by  the  closest  ties  of  gratitude, 
came  as  a  shock;  but  the  majority,  who  had  seen  it  coming, 
declared  that,  after  all,  it  was  a  thousand  times  preferable 
to  have  an  avowed  foe  than  to  run  the  risk  of  being  be- 
trayed by  a  false  friend. 

This,  however,  was  poor  consolation  in  the  face  of  the 
fact  that  the  alliance  of  Bulgaria  with  Germany  and  with 
Turkey  would  assure  the  direct  communication  of  these  two 
powers  with  each  other,  and  thus  add  considerably  to  the  al- 
ready numerous  difficulties  with  which  the  Allies  were  find- 
ing themselves  confronted  in  the  Balkans.  Some  people 
said  that  it  would  perhaps  have  been  more  judicious  on  the 
part  of  Russia  not  to  have  issued  its  ultimatum  to  King 
Ferdinand  until  he  had  thrown  off  his  mask  and  spontane- 
ously announced  his  intentions  of  becoming  untrue  to  all  the 
promises  which  he  had  made.  All  the  same,  considering 
the  dignity  of  a  great  country  like  Russia,  it  could  hardly 
have  been  expected  that  she  would  remain  quiet  under  provo- 


BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS    329 

cations  which  were  as  insolent  as  they  were  disgraceful. 

King  Ferdinand  acted  throughout  with  that  hypocrisy  in 
which  he  had  always  shown  himself  a  master.  He  began 
by  saying  that  he  had  done  all  that  lay  within  his  power 
to  remain  upon  good  terms  with  the  Russian  Government, 
but  that  the  bulk  of  the  Bulgarian  nation,  being  opposed  to 
Russia,  were  not  going  to  continue  to  be  bullied  by  the  latter 
country,  as  had  been  the  case  lately.  He  therefore  found 
himself  compelled  to  submit  to  the  wishes  of  his  people.  He 
also  considerately  added  that  he  was  convinced  the  Central 
Powers  would  be  victorious,  and  so  he  could  not  pursue  any 
other  policy,  an  avowal  which  had  at  least  the  merit  of  being 
perfectly  frank,  a  thing  that  must  have  astonished  Ferdi- 
nand himself,  so  little  used  was  he  to  tell  the  truth. 

The  Greek  question  also  was  causing  trouble  and  anx- 
iety, and  altogether  the  position  in  the  Balkans  seemed  to 
have  assumed  a  most  grave  character,  one  of  the  worst  fea- 
tures being  the  possibilities  of  new  surprises  every  day  com- 
ing from  the  most  unexpected  quarters.  With  a  man  like 
King  Ferdinand  treason  was  a  matter  of  indifference,  and 
he  could  with  perfect  equanimity  try  to  win  the  friendship 
of  those  whom  he  had  reviled  a  few  days  before.  A  man 
who  knew  him  well,  and  who  happened  to  have  been  at  Sofia 
while  negotiations  were  still  going  on  between  the  Bulgarian 
Government  and  Serbia,  wrote  to  me  as  follows  on  his  re- 
turn: 

"My  journey  has  been  a  most  interesting  one,  but  I  am 
not  at  all  sorry  it  has  come  to  an  end.  Bulgaria  is  not  a 
nice  country  to  live  in  at  the  present  moment.  One  has  all 
the  time  the  feeling  that  one  is  allowed  to  exist  on  sufferance, 
and  that  the  inhabitants  of  this  land  look  upon  one  with  the 
eyes  of  a  crocodile  about  to  swallow  the  victim  he  has  been 
watching  for  a  long  time.  King  Ferdinand  is  surely  medi- 
tating some  big  coup  from  which  he  probably  hopes  to  ob- 
tain at  last  supremacy  over  the  whole  of  the  Balkan  Penin- 
sula, an  ambition  he  has  had  ever  since  his  acceptance  of 
the  Bulgarian  throne.  It  was  a  tremendous  mistake  not  to 
oblige  Serbia  to  concede  everything  her  neighbor  asked  from 
her,  rather  than  furnish  Bulgaria  with  a  pretext  for  joining 


330    BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS 

the  ranks  of  her  enemies.  The  idea  that  it  would  have  been 
useless  because  Ferdinand  would  always  have  remained  the 
tool  of  Austria  was  a  perfectly  foolish  one.  First  of  all, 
Ferdinand  has  never  been  the  tool  of  anybody,  or  of  any- 
thing, save  perhaps  of  his  own  ambition.  He  has  absolutely 
no  sympathies  for  Austria,  or  for  Francis  Joseph,  who  more 
than  once  has  humiliated  him,  and  made  him  feel  that  they 
had  nothing  in  common.  He  hates  Russia  just  as  much,  and 
tolerates  Germany  and  its  Kaiser  simply  because  it  seems 
to  him  that  from  that  quarter  he  may  expect  the  most.  The 
great  strength  of  the  man  consists  in  his  knowledge  of  his 
own  importance  at  this  moment  of  crisis,  when  his  going 
over  to  one  side  or  to  the  other  means  so  much  to  those  with 
whom  he  chooses  to  throw  in  his  lot.  His  uncommon  cute- 
ness  makes  him  realize  that  where  two  quarrel  then  is  the 
opportunity  for  a  third  party  to  take  what  he  considers  his 
own,  and  to  get  what  he  wants  :  Ferdinand  certainly  does  not 
belong  to  the  people  who  miss  their  opportunities.  He  has 
been  preparing  himself  all  along  for  the  part  he  means  to 
play  now,  and  he  has  contrived  to  assure  himself  of  the  co- 
operation of  many  influential  persons  in  Bulgaria,  who  from 
quite  different  motives  from  his  own  would  like  to  get  rid 
of  Russian  influence  and  Russia's  constant  interference  in 
the  affairs  of  their  country  and  of  the  Balkan  Peninsula. 
Being  perfectly  aware  that  it  is  highly  improbable  that  Rus- 
sia will  be  allowed  to  take  Constantinople,  he  would  like  to 
be  the  one  personage  indicated  to  supplant  the  Sultan  on 
that  throne  of  ancient  Byzantium  which  he  has  coveted  ever 
since  he  set  foot  on  Bulgarian  soil. 

"With  quite  an  artistic  touch  King  Ferdinand  has  slowly 
fomented  an  intense  distrust  against  Russia  amongst  his 
subjects,  and  persuaded  them  that  Russia,  instead  of  having 
their  interests  at  heart,  is  aspiring  to  put  one  of  her  Grand 
Dukes  in  the  Palace  of  Sofia,  and  to  make  Bulgaria  a  Rus- 
sian province.  The  idea,  of  course,  is  a  most  distasteful  one, 
and  Ferdinand  has  found  in  it  one  of  his  best  pretexts  for 
persuading  his  ignorant  and  unsuspicious  people  that  it  would 
be  to  their  advantage  to  join  the  Central  Powers  in  their 
struggle  against  the  Allies.     His  excellent  argument  for  en- 


BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS    331 

forcing  his  opinions  has  been  to  put  into  prison  all  those 
who  ventured  to  question  them  or  to  challenge  their  sin- 
cerity. Sofia  swarms  with  spies,  who  keep  the  Government 
informed  of  all  the  persons  whose  influence  might  be  exer- 
cised against  the  King  and  his  schemes.  I  can  assure  you 
that  though  King  Ferdinand  received  me,  and  asked  me  to 
dinner,  and  showed  himself  most  gracious  toward  me — in 
memory  of  the  past,  I  suppose — yet  I  was  not  at  all  sure 
when  I  went  to  bed  that  I  might  not  be  wakened  during  the 
night  by  gendarmes  come  to  arrest  me,  and  I  heaved  a  deep 
sigh  of  relief  when  I  had  crossed  the  Bulgarian  frontier. 
Nothing  that  can  happen  in  that  land  of  surprises  will  aston- 
ish me,  and  even  if  Ferdinand  decided  to  pass  over  to  the 
enemy,  and  to  put  his  army  at  the  disposal  of  Germany,  this 
would  not  mean  at  all  that  he  could  not  change  his  mind 
at  the  eleventh  hour,  because  after  he  had  started  on  the  war 
path  he  might,  if  the  allurement  proved  sufficiently  strong 
to  tempt  him,  invoke  that  conscience  of  which  he  has  made 
such  profitable  use,  and  explain  to  his  subjects  that  he  had 
convinced  himself  the  Allies  were  in  the  right.  No  man  alive 
has  ever  practiced  better  than  he  has  done  the  art  of  forget- 
ting his  resolutions  of  the  day  before  in  favor  of  his  sympa- 
thies of  the  next." 

There  was  certainly  a  good  deal  in  what  my  corre- 
spondent wrote,  and  it  is  most  likely  that  if  the  Russian  For- 
eign Office  had  been  a  little  more  tactful,  Bulgaria's  neutral- 
ity might  have  been  secured.  M.  Sazonof,  however,  was 
far  too  honest  to  promise  what  he  did  not  intend  or  mean  to 
grant.  Rather  than  compromise  himself  by  negotiations 
which  might  have  been  interpreted  in  a  false  light,  he  pre- 
ferred to  send  the  ultimatum  to  the  Bulgarian  Government, 
which  resulted  in  the  rupture  of  diplomatic  relations  between 
Petrograd  and  Sofia.  Very  soon  afterwards  the  Czar  an- 
nounced to  his  faithful  subjects  that  the  Bulgaria  which  we 
had  created  and  delivered  from  the  Turkish  yoke  had  turned 
traitor  to  us,  and  joined  the  ranks  of  our  enemies. 

The  great  question  which  followed  upon  this  announce- 
ment was  how  to  get  to  the  help  of  Serbia  before  the  latter 
country  had  been  entirely  annihilated  by  the  combined  Aus- 


332     BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS 

trian  and  German  armies.  Whilst  these  events  were  taking 
place,  the  Allies  were  landing  as  many  men  as  they  could  at 
Salonika,  but  were  confronted  by  new  difficulties  coming 
from  Greece.  The  war  was  beginning  once  more  to  assume 
a  character  more  favorable  to  our  enemies  than  it  had  done 
for  the  last  three  months,  and  it  was  also  getting  more  and 
more  agonizing,  owing  to  the  suspense  which  it  entailed  on 
all  those  who  were  immediately  concerned. 

For  Russians  the  fact  of  having  to  fight  against  Slav 
brethren  was  inexpressibly  bitter  and  painful.  It  added  a 
new  horror  to  all  those  already  experienced;  but  hard  as  it 
was  to  draw  the  sword  to  punish  people  with  whom  one  had 
believed  most  sincerely  that  one  would  always  remain  on 
brotherly  and  affectionate  terms,  awful  as  it  seemed  to  find 
that  one's  own  familiar  friend  had  turned  false,  the  moral 
disaster  did  not  destroy  the  confidence  which  Russia  felt  as 
to  the  ultimate  issue  of  the  war.  That  war  had  to  be  won, 
even  if  the  struggle  lasted  ten  years,  even  if  it  extended  to  a 
whole  century.  The  German  tyrant  had  to  be  crushed,  Ger- 
man arrogance  had  to  be  destroyed. 

BY   M.    RADOSLAVOFF 

To-day  we  see  races  that  are  fighting,  not  indeed  for 
ideals,  but  solely  for  their  material  interests.  The  more, 
therefore,  we  are  bound  to  a  country  in  a  material  way,  the 
greater  is  that  country's  interest  in  our  maintenance  and 
increase,  since  thereby  that  one  will  profit  who  helps  us 
and  is  tied  to  us  by  economic  bonds. 

If,  therefore,  we  are  to  change  our  previous  policy  for 
indefinite,  unsafe,  and  to  us  even  unknown  advantages,  that 
means  the  ruin  of  our  agriculture  and  trade,  and  indeed 
everything  that  we  have  built  up  in  thirty-six  years,  the 
reconstruction  of  our  entire  business  as  a  people,  and  the 
seeking  of  new  export  markets  for  our  goods. 

The  figures  show  that  our  trade,  our  interests,  and  our 
economic  life  are  inseparably  linked  with  Turkey,  Germany, 
and  Austria-Hungary.  .  .  . 

What  would  become  of  Bulgaria  if  Constantinople  should 
become    Russian   and   we    should   lose   the   Constantinople 


BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS    333 

market  ?  We  have  seen  that  almost  our  entire  export  trade 
in  live  stock,  cheese,  kashkawal,  flour,  etc.,  goes  to  Turkey 
— that  is  to  say,  to  Constantinople.  If,  now,  Constantinople 
is  conquered  by  Russia,  it  will  introduce  there  its  autono- 
mous protective  staff,  and  will  make  impossible  the  present 
exports  of  Bulgarian  products  to  Constantinople.  Even  as 
Bulgaria  cannot  now  export  anything  to  Russia,  so  it  will 
be  unable  to  export  anything  to  the  Russian  Constantinople. 
There  are  no  other  export  markets  for  these  products  at 
present,  and  such  cannot  be  easily  found. 

But  if  we  go  against  Germany,  it  would  for  sanitary 
and  veterinary  reasons  immediately  cut  off  the  imports  of 
Bulgarian  eggs  and  make  more  difficult  our  tobacco  im- 
ports. All  this  would  cause  an  economic  crisis  in  Bulgaria 
such  as  we  have  never  before  witnessed  and  of  which  we 
can  scarcely  form  a  conception.  Our  live  stock  industry, 
as  well  as  all  mills  that  have  been  set  up  in  Varna  and  Burgas 
to  grind  flour  for  Constantinople,  will  be  ruined.  Our  finest 
and  most  useful  industry  will  be  destroyed,  and  the  millions 
invested  in  them  lost.  The  live  stock  industry  is  the  basis 
of  our  agricultural  life. 

In  heavy  days  for  Bulgaria,  Germany  assisted  and  gave 
it  the  required  loan  without  any  political  conditions  whatso- 
ever. Every  impartial  Bulgar  is  in  duty  bound  to  confess 
that  through  this  loan  Germany  saved  us  from  bankruptcy, 
as  well  as  from  political  subjugation.  The  war  has  shown 
how  mighty  Germany,  and  even  Austria-Hungary,  is  in  an 
economic  sense.  If  these  States,  therefore,  desire  it,  they 
have  always  the  power  to  render  us  valuable  support.  They 
have  done  so  till  now,  and  we  have  no  reason  to  suppose 
that  they  will  not  support  us  also  in  the  future.  On  the 
contrary,  from  the  assurances  in  German  newspapers  and 
statements  of  German  statesmen,  we  can  with  full  confidence 
count  upon  German  financial  help.  Even  as  we  write  these 
lines  we  are  informed  that  Germany  has  again  granted  us  a 
loan  of  125,000,000  lewas  ($25,000,000)  for  the  defraying 
of  current  debts,  without  any  political  conditions. 

Our  greatest  foe  to-day  is  Serbia.  It  has  subjugated 
the  purely  Bulgarian  Macedonia  and  is  administering  it  in 


334    BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS 

a  barbarian  manner  never  before  witnessed.  For  the  Mace- 
donian populace  there  are  no  laws  and  no  human  rights  of 
any  sort.  This  populace  is,  without  exception,  exposed  to 
slaughter ;  the  streams  are  red  with  blood ;  women  have  been 
violated,  and  the  male  population  suitable  for  military  ser- 
vice has  been  sent  into  the  field  to  die  for  the  creation  of  a 
"Greater  Serbia."  One  need  only  profess  to  be  a  Bulgar 
in  Macedonia  to  be  beaten  to  death  like  a  dog,  so  great  is 
the  hatred  of  Serbia  toward  Bulgaria.  After  the  wars  the 
Serbs  had  grown  so  arrogant  that  the  transit  of  a  Bulgar 
through  Serbia — no  matter  who  he  was — was  absolutely 
dangerous  to  his  life,  because  in  that  State,  which,  accord- 
ing to  our  Government  organ,  filar odni  Prava,  is  ruled  by 
liars,  there  exist  no  laws  for  Bulgars.  If  we  do  not  more 
quickly  deliver  our  brothers  in  Macedonia  from  the  unbear- 
able, cruel,  and  bloody  yoke,  not  a  Bulgar  will  be  left  in 
this  purely  Bulgarian  land.  Things  are,  moreover,  already 
in  such  a  condition  that  Bulgaria  cannot  possibly  exist  next 
to  a  "Greater  Serbia,"  inasmuch  as  the  latter,  which  lays 
claim  to  our  country  up  to  the  Jantra,  will  continually  chal- 
lenge us  until  it  destroys  us. 

We  do  not  know  the  wording  of  the  famous  note  which 
the  Quadruple  Entente  has  delivered  to  the  Bulgarian  Gov- 
ernment, but  from  what  has  been  said  and  written  in  the 
newspapers,  these  facts  are  seen: 

i.  That  Russia  and  its  allies  give  us  nothing  for  our 
neutrality,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  demand  that  we  shall 
take  part  in  the  war  as  soon  as  possible. 

2.  That  Bulgaria  is  to  turn  over  its  armies  to  the 
Quadruple  Entente,  placing  them  fully  at  the  Entente's  dis- 
posal, leaving  the  Entente  to  command  them  and  send  them 
wherever  it  seems  advisable. 

3.  That  the  Bulgarian  Army  must  conquer  Constan- 
tinople and  then  hand  it  over  to  Russia ;  and, 

4.  In  return  for  all  this  Bulgaria  is  permitted  to  retain 
the  territory  up  to  the  Enos-Midia  line,  and  it  is  promised 
some  obscure  and  insufficient  compensations  in  Macedonia, 
but  only  in  case  Serbia  is  sufficiently  compensated  by  Aus- 
tria. 


BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS    335 

That  means :  give  your  army,  so  that  we  may  mix  it  up 
with  our  wild  hordes  and  send  them  out  for  destruction  on 
the  various  scenes  of  battle;  and  then,  when  Serbia  has 
grown  great  and  has  taken  South  Hungary,  Croatia,  Dal- 
matia,  Bosnia,  and  Herzegovina,  and  has  grown  to  a  State 
of  from  fifteen  to  twenty  millions  Bulgaria  will  get  a  small 
bit  of  land. 

This  shows  most  clearly  how  strongly  the  Quadruple  En- 
tente is  allied  to  Serbia ;  how  it  is  unwilling  to  persuade  the 
latter  to  make  concessions,  and  how  it  mocks  our  legitimate 
demands.  The  Quadruple  Entente  is  known  for  its  noise 
and  its.  making  of  alarms.  It  is  known,  too,  that  during 
our  last  negotiations  for  a  loan  they  published  secret  notes 
and  even  meddled  in  our  internal  affairs  merely  in  order  to 
evoke  disturbances  in  the  country  to  win  Bulgaria  for  the 
Quadruple  Entente.  In  this  respect  Germany  and  Austria- 
Hungary  work  quietly  and  without  noise.  From  what  well- 
informed  persons  have  told  us  we  can  with  certainty  state 
that  the  promises  of  Germany  and  Austria-Hungary  to  Bul- 
garia for  its  neutrality  are,  in  the  main,  as  follows : 

1.  All  of  Macedonia,  including  Skopie,  Bitolia,  Och- 
rida,  etc. 

2.  Friendly  mediation  between  Bulgaria  and  Turkey 
for  the  purpose  of  ceding  the  line  to  Dedeaghatch  and  the 
territory  west  of  the  right  bank  of  the  Maritza.  This  agree- 
ment with  Turkey  is  expected  in  a  short  time. 

Still  further  territorial  promises  have  been  made  to  us 
at  the  expense  of  Serbia  by  the  Central  Powers  in  case  of 
our  active  military  assistance.  These  promises  are  in  ac- 
cordance with  our  demands  for  a  common  frontier  with  Aus- 
tria-Hungary along  the  Danube.  The  present  war  has 
shown  how  absolutely  necessary  it  is  that  we  should  have 
a  direct  and  immediate  connection  with  Hungary  in  order 
that  we  may  be  independent  of  a  Serbia  that  has  gone  crazy. 
But  also  other  parts  of  Old  Serbia  have  been  set  forth 
for  us  in  prospect. 

Here  we  can  see  clearly  the  Quadruple  Entente,  in  re- 
turn for  slight,  uncertain,  and  doubtful  advantages,  demands 
great  sacrifices  from  us,  and  that  Germany  and  Austria- 


336     BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS 

Hungary  give  us  clearly  and  categorically  to  understand 
the  things  they  are  willing  to  give  us  in  return  for  incom- 
parably slighter  sacrifices  on  our  part.  But  the  question 
has  another  side  as  well — we  do  not  believe  in  promises  of 
any  sort  any  more,  anyway,  and  still  less  those  of  the  Quad- 
ruple Entente,  which  took  up  Italy  as  an  ally  after  it  had 
in  such  treacherous  fashion  trampled  under  foot  its  word 
of  honor  and  broken  a  thirty-three-year-old  treaty  of  al- 
liance. On  the  contrary,  we  have  full  reason  to  believe  in 
a  treaty  with  Germany,  which  has  always  fulfilled  its  treaty 
obligations,  and  is  fighting  the  whole  world  merely  in  ordei 
to  live  up  to  its  treaty  obligations  to  the  Austro-Hungarian 
Monarchy. 

Finally,  we  must  hold  to  that  group  of  the  powers  which 
will  win  the  victory  in  the  present  war,  since  only  so  can  the 
important  territorial  extensions  and  further  developments 
be  insured.  From  the  developments  of  the  operations  in  the 
various  theaters  of  the  war,  on  the  front  against  France 
and  Belgium  as  well  as  the  fronts  against  Italy,  Russia,  and 
Serbia,  one  recognizes  more  clearly  day  by  day  that  vic- 
tory is  inclining  on  the  side  of  Germany  and  Austria-Hun- 
gary. We  need  not  linger  long  over  the  question,  inasmuch 
as  it  has  become  clear  to  the  point  of  certainty  for  every 
observer  that  Russia,  which  has  lost  fortresses  like  Warsaw 
and  Ivangorod,  will  soon  be  overthrown,  and  then  the  turn 
will  come  for  France,  Italy,  England,  and  Serbia.  Ger- 
many has  proved  that  it  is  so  strongly  organized  in  a  military 
and  material  sense  and  can  dispose  of  such  enormous,  su- 
perior, and  inexhaustible  forces  as  will  enable  it  soon  to 
overthrow  its  foes. 

ITALIAN  DISPATCH  FROM  LONDON  "DAILY  TELEGRAPH" 

Five  opposition  members  of  the  parliament,  MM.  Gues- 
hoff,  Danoff,  Malinoff,  Zanoff,  and  Stambulivski,  were  re- 
ceived by  the  King  in  the  Red  Room  at  the  Royal  Palace, 
and  chairs  had  been  placed  for  them  around  a  big  table.  The 
King  entered  the  room,  accompanied  by  Prince  Boris,  the 
heir  apparent,  and  his  Secretary,  M.  Bobcovitch.  "Be 
seated,  gentlemen,"  said  the  King,  as  he  sat  down  himself 


BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS   337 

as  if  for  a  very  quiet  talk.  His  Secretary  took  a  seat  at  a 
table  a  little  apart  to  take  notes,  but  the  conversation  imme- 
diately became  so  heated  and  rapid  that  he  was  unable  to 
write  it  down. 

The  first  to  speak  was  M.  Malinoff,  leader  of  the  Demo- 
cratic Party,  who  said :  "The  policy  adopted  by  the  Gov- 
ernment is  one  of  adventure  tending  to  throw  Bulgaria  into 
the  arms  of  Germany,  and  driving  her  to  attack  Serbia. 
This  policy  is  contrary  to  the  aspirations,  feeling,  and  in- 
terests of  the  country,  and  if  the  Government  obstinately 
continues  in  this  way  it  will  provoke  disturbances  of  the 
greatest  gravity." 

It  was  the  first  allusion  to  the  possibility  of  a  revolu- 
tion, but  the  King  listened  without  flinching.  M.  Malinoff 
concluded :  "For  these  reasons  we  beg  your  Majesty,  after 
having  vainly  asked  the  Government,  to  convoke  the  Cham- 
ber immediately,  and  we  ask  this  convocation  for  the  precise 
object  of  saving  the  country  from  dangerous  adventures 
by  the  formation  of  a  coalition  Ministry." 

The  King  remained  silent,  and,  with  a  nod,  invited  M. 
Stambulivski  to  speak. 

M.  Stambulivski  is  the  leader  of  the  Agrarian  Party,  a 
man  of  sturdy  rustic  appearance,  accustomed  to  speak  out 
his  mind  boldly,  and  exceedingly  popular  among  the  peasant 
population.  He  grew  up  himself  as  a  peasant,  and  wore  the 
laborer's  blouse  up  till  very  recently.  He  stood  up,  and, 
looking  the  King  straight  in  the  face,  said  in  a  resolute  tone : 

"In  the  name  of  every  farmer  in  Bulgaria  I  add  to  what 
M.  Malinoff  has  just  said,  that  the  Bulgarian  people  hold 
you  personally  responsible  more  than  your  Government  for 
the  disastrous  adventure  of  1913.  If  a  similar  adventure 
were  to  be  repeated  now  its  gravity  this  time  would  be  ir- 
reparable. The  responsibility  would  once  more  fall  on  your 
policy,  which  is  contrary  to  the  welfare  of  our  country,  and 
the  nation  would  not  hesitate  to  call  you  personally  to  ac- 
count. That  there  may  be  no  mistake  as  to  the  real  wishes 
of  the  country,  I  present  to  your  Majesty  my  country's  de- 
mand in  writing." 

He  handed  the  King  a  letter  containing  the  resolution 


33$     BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS 

voted  by  the  Agrarians.  The  King  read  it,  and  then  turned 
to  M.  Zanoff,  leader  of  the  Radical  Democrats,  and  asked 
him  to  speak.  M.  Zanoff  did  so,  speaking  very  slowly  and 
impressively,  and  also  looking  the  King  straight  in  the  face : 

"Sire,  I  had  sworn  never  again  to  set  foot  inside  your 
palace,  and  if  I  came  to-day,  it  is  because  the  interests  of  my 
country  are  above  personal  questions,  and  have  compelled 
me.  Your  Majesty  may  read  what  I  have  to  say  in  this 
letter,  which  I  submit  to  you  in  behalf  of  our  party." 

He  handed  the  letter,  and  the  King  read  it  and  still  re- 
mained silent.  Then  he  said,  turning  to  his  former  Prime 
Minister  and  ablest  politician :  "Gueshoff,  it  is  now  your 
turn  to  speak." 

M.  Gueshoff  got  up  and  said :  "I  also  am  fully  in  accord 
with  what  M.  Stambulivski  has  just  said.  No  matter  how 
severe  his  words  may  have  been  in  their  simple,  unpolished 
frankness,  which  ignores  the  ordinary  formalities  of  eti- 
quette, they  entirely  express  our  unanimous  opinion.  We 
all,  as  representing  the  Opposition,  consider  the  present  pol- 
icy of  the  Government  contrary  to  the  sentiments  and  the 
interests  of  the  country  because  by  driving  it  to  make  com- 
mon cause  with  Germany  it  makes  us  the  enemies  of  Russia, 
which  was  our  deliverer,  and  the  adventure  into  which  we 
are  thus  thrown  compromises  our  future.  We  disapprove 
most  absolutely  of  such  a  policy,  and  we  also  ask  that  the 
Chamber  be  convoked  and  a  Ministry  formed  with  the  co- 
operation of  all  parties." 

After  M.  Gueshoff,  the  former  Premier  M.  Daneff  also 
spoke  and  associated  himself  with  what  had  already  been 
said. 

The  King  remained  still  silent  for  a  while.  Then  he  also 
stood  up  and  said:  "Gentlemen,  I  have  listened  to  your 
threats  and  will  refer  them  to  the  President  of  the  Council 
of  Ministers  that  he  may  know  and  decide  what  to  do." 

All  present  bowed,  and  a  chilly  silence  followed.  The 
King  had  evidently  taken  the  frank  warning  given  him  as  a 
threat  to  him  personally,  and  he  walked  up  and  down  ner- 
vously for  a  while.  Prince  Boris  turned  aside  to  talk  with 
the  Secretary,  who  had  resumed  taking  notes.     The  King 


BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS   339 

continued  pacing  to  and  fro,  evidently  very  nettled.  Then, 
approaching  M.  Zanoff,  and  as  if  to  change  the  conversation, 
he  asked  him  for  news  about  this  season's  harvest. 

M.  Zanoff  abruptly  replied :  "Your  Majesty  knows  that 
we  have  not  come  here  to  talk  about  the  harvest,  but  of  some- 
thing far  more  important  at  present,  namely,  the  policy  of 
your  Government,  which  is  on  the  point  of  ruining  our 
country.  We  can  on  no  account  approve  a  policy  that  is 
anti-Russian.  If  the  Crown  and  M.  Radoslavoff  persist  in 
their  policy  we  shall  not  answer  for  the  consequences.  We 
have  not  desired  to  seek  out  those  responsible  for  the  disas- 
ter of  1 91 3,  because  other  grave  events  have  been  precipi- 
tated, but  it  was  a  disaster  due  to  criminal  folly.  It  must 
not  be  repeated  by  an  attack  on  Serbia  by  Bulgaria,  as  seems 
contemplated  by  M.  Radoslavoff,  and  which,  according  to 
all  appearances,  has  the  approval  of  your  Majesty.  It  would 
be  a  premeditated  crime,  and  deserve  to  be  punished." 

The  King  hesitated  a  moment,  and  then  held  out  his  hand 
to  M.  Zanoff,  saying:  "All  right;  at  all  events,  I  thank 
you  for  your  frankness."  Then  approaching  M.  Stambuliv- 
ski,  he  repeated  to  him  his  question  about  the  harvest. 

M.  Stambulivski,  as  a  simple  peasant,  at  first  allowed 
himself  to  be  led  into  discussion  of  this  secondary  matter, 
and  had  expressed  the  hope  that  the  prohibition  of  the  ex- 
port of  cereals  would  be  removed,  when  he  suddenly  remem- 
bered, and  said :  "But  this  is  not  the  moment  to  speak  of 
these  things.  I  again  repeat  to  your  Majesty  that  the  coun- 
try does  not  want  a  policy  of  adventure,  which  cost  it  so  dear 
in  1913.  It  was  your  own  policy,  too.  Before  1913  we 
thought  you  were  a  great  diplomatist,  but  since  then  we  have 
seen  what  fruits  your  diplomacy  bears.  You  took  advantage 
of  all  the  loopholes  in  the  Constitution  to  direct  the  country 
according  to  your  own  views.  Your  Ministers  are  nothing; 
you  alone  are  the  author  of  this  policy,  and  you  will  have  to 
bear  the  responsibility." 

The  King  replied  frigidly :  "The  policy  which  I  have 
decided  to  follow  is  that  which  I  consider  the  best  for  the 
welfare  of  the  country." 

"It  is  a  policy  that  will  only  bring  misfortune,"  replied 


340     BULGARIA  JOINS  THE  CENTRAL  POWERS 

the  sturdy  Agrarian.  "It  will  lead  to  fresh  catastrophes  and 
compromise  not  only  the  future  of  our  country  but  that  of 
your  dynasty,  and  may  cost  you  your  head." 

It  was  as  bold  a  saying  as  ever  was  uttered  before  a 
King,  and  Ferdinand  looked  astonished  at  the  peasant  who 
was  thus  speaking  to  him.  He  said :  "Do  not  mind  my 
head;  it  is  already  old.  Rather  mind  your  own,"  he  added, 
with  a  disdainful  smile,  as  he  turned  away. 

M.  Stambulivski  retorted:  "My  head  matters  little, 
Sire.     What  matters  more  is  the  good  of  our  country." 

The  King  paid  no  more  attention  to  him,  and  took  M. 
Gueshoff  and  M.  Danoff  apart,  who  again  insisted  on  con- 
voking the  Chamber,  and  assured  him  that  M.  Radoslavoff's 
Government  would  be  in  a  minority.  They  also  referred 
to  the  Premier's  oracular  utterances. 

"Ah!"  said  the  King,  "has  Radoslavoff  spoken  to  you? 
And  what  has  he  said?" 

"He  has  said,"  replied  the  leaders,  "that  Bulgaria  would 
march  with  Germany  and  attack  Serbia." 

The  King  made  a  vague  gesture,  and  then  said :  "Oh, 
I  did  not  know !" 

The  incidents  of  this  famous  interview  are  beginning 
to  be  gradually  known  in  Sofia,  and  have  created  a  deep  im- 
pression in  political  circles. 


THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA 

THE  HEROIC  STRUGGLE  AGAINST   HOPELESS   ODDS 

OCTOBER   6TH — NOVEMBER   30TH 

VLADISLAV  SAVIC  ROBERT  MACHRAY 

Bulgaria's  entrance  into  the  War  sealed  Serbia's  doom.  Too  late, 
the  Allies  hurried  an  army  to  the  Greek  city  of  Salonika,  the  near- 
est seaport  on  the  Mediterranean,  and  endeavored  to  advance  from 
there  to  Serbia's  aid.  Bulgaria  controlled  the  railroad  route  which 
led  from  Salonika  toward  northern  Serbia ;  and  from  the  north  an 
overwhelming  German-Austrian  attack  was  launched  on  October  6th. 
As  soon  as  this  Teuton  invasion  was  well  launched,  Bulgaria  made 
her  sudden  declaration  of  war  and  swooped  like  a  vulture  on  the  hard- 
pressed  Serbs. 

The  Allied  army  at  Salonika  and  the  Ally  supplies  might  have 
sufficed  to  save  Serbia  from  the  Teuton  attack;  but  the  Allied  army 
could  not  fight  its  way  through  the  mountain  passes  held  by  the  Bul- 
garians. Thus  this  second  Ally  army  in  the  Balkans,  like  the  first  at 
the  Dardanelles,  met  only  repulse  and  brought  disrepute  to  the  Ally 
cause  throughout  the  East.  Serbia  was  crushed,  and  to  all  the  Balkans 
German  victory  must  have  seemed  assured. 

The  story  of  the  disaster  is  told  here  by  Vladislav  Savic,  a  Serbian 
soldier,  and  by  the  British  authority  on  Serbian  affairs,  Robert 
Machray,  who  quotes  extensively  from  German  sources,  to  show  the 
Teuton  viewpoint  as  well. 

BY  VLADISLAV  SAVIC 

AFTER  the  German  success  in  Russia  during  the  summer 
of  191 5,  Germany,  realizing  the  full  importance  of 
the  Balkan  front,  turned  her  attention  to  the  south  and  de- 
cided upon  an  offensive  against  Serbia.  Having  no  trust  in 
Austrian  forces  or  leadership  and  perfectly  aware  of  the  re- 
sistance Serbia  would  offer,  this  time  the  new  army  of  in- 
vasion consisted  mainly  of  German  troops  and  its  command 
was  intrusted  to  Mackensen,  decidedly  one  of  the  ablest  Ger- 
man generals.  On  their  part  the  Entente  Powers  were  mis- 
guided in  their  Balkan  policy  and  totally  failed  to  grasp  the 
situation.  Instead  of  reenforcing  the  Serbian  front  as  the 
best  means  of  inducing  Rumania  and  Greece  to  side  with 

341 


342  THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA 

the  Allies  and  of  preventing  Bulgaria  from  joining  the 
Central  Powers,  their  diplomacy  began  the  fruitless  negotia- 
tions with  Bulgaria  which  only  accelerated  the  German  of- 
fensive and  the  terrible  disaster  which  befell  Serbia. 

In  September,  191 5,  the  Austro-German  forces  under 
the  command  of  Field-Marshal  Mackensen  were  massed  on 
the  Serbian  front  along  the  Save  and  the  Danube.  Mean- 
while the  negotiations  undertaken  by  the  diplomacy  of  the 
Entente  Powers  with  Bulgaria  were  protracted  without  lead- 
ing to  any  result.  Bulgaria  played  her  double  game  very 
adroitly.  She  could  not  move  before  the  Austro-German 
forces  were  ready  for  cooperation  with  her.  On  the  19th 
of  September  the  Germans  opened  the  bombardment  of  the 
Serbian  front.  Four  days  later,  on  the  23rd  of  September, 
Bulgaria  ordered  the  general  mobilization.  The  Serbian 
headquarters  entertained  no  doubt  concerning  the  objective 
of  the  Bulgarian  military  action.  With  an  enormous  front 
some  320  miles  in  length  towards  Bulgaria,  with  her  main 
line  of  communication,  Nish-Salonika,  within  reach  of  the 
first  successful  Bulgarian  raid,  Serbia's  military  position  was 
extremely  dangerous.  The  only  chance  to  improve  it  was 
quick,  energetic  action  against  Bulgaria.  The  Serbian  head- 
quarters did  not  expect  by  such  a  move  to  conquer  Bulgaria 
or  to  annihilate  her  army  completely ,~  but  they  rightly  judged 
that  it  would  hinder  the  Bulgarian  mobilization  in  the  west- 
ern districts,  and  by  occupation  of  some  important  centers 
it  might  cripple  her  forces  considerably  and  greatly  hamper 
her  action.  In  that  way  the  enemy's  victory  might  be  de- 
layed, and  by  gaining  some  weeks  the  Allies  might  fulfill 
their  promise  of  assisting  Serbia.  The  Serbian  population 
and  army  might  have  retreated  to  the  south,  using  the  rail- 
way line  Nish-Salonika,  which  would  have  saved  many  thou- 
sands of  lives  and  enormous  quantities  of  war  material. 
With  this  object  in  view,  the  Serbian  headquarters  ordered 
a  new  concentration  of  the  army  along  the  Serbo-Bulgarian 
frontier.  But  the  diplomacy  of  the  Entente  Powers  al- 
lowed itself  to  be  the  perfect  dupe  of  Bulgaria.  Fearing 
that  the  Serbian  action  might  spoil  its  cherished  play  at 
Sofia,  it  brought  strong  pressure  to  bear  upon  the  Serbian 


THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA  343 

Government,  which  prevented  the  Serbian  military  action 
against  Bulgaria.  From  that  moment  Serbia  was  doomed, 
the  crushing  of  her  army  by  the  united  Bulgaro-Austro- 
German  forces  was  inevitable,  and  her  population  was  ex- 
posed to  fearful  sufferings  and  privations  unparalleled  in 
modern  times. 

But  to  the  eternal  glory  of  Serbia,  even  in  the  moment  of 
such  supreme  danger,  she  organized  her  small  forces  as  best 
she  could,  and  offered  a  resistance  which,  better  than  any 
victory  could,  speaks  of  the  indomitable  spirit  of  the  Serbs. 

At  the  end  of  September,  191 5,  the  Austro-German 
forces  were  disposed  along  the  Danube  and  the  Save  in  the 
following  way: 

Opposite  the  Serbian  front  Ram-Smederevo-Grocka  was 
the  army  of  General  Gallwitz,  consisting  of  nine  German  di- 
visions. Against  the  front  Grocka-Belgrade-Ostruznica 
were  two  German  and  two  Austrian  divisions.  From  Obre- 
novac  to  the  mouth  of  the  Drina  was  the  19th  Austrian  army 
corps,  with  some  detached  brigades  along  the  Drina.  That 
whole  army  numbered  in  German  and  53  Austrian  bat- 
talions. 

To  oppose  them  the  Serbians  could  concentrate  on  the 
northern  front  only  116  battalions,  of  which  40  battalions 
belonged  to  the  third  ban.  The  remaining  troops  were  en- 
gaged on  the  Serbo-Bulgarian  frontier.  Besides  outnum- 
bering the  Serbs  by  three  to  two  in  the  infantry,  the  Austro- 
German  division  disposed  of  two  regiments  of  artillery,  but 
especially  in  heavy  artillery  their  advantage  over  the  Ser- 
bian troops  was  enormous. 

On  October  6th  the  Austro-Germans,  after  heavy  ar- 
tillery preparation  from  pieces  of  every  caliber,  and  with- 
out sparing  ammunition,  began  the  crossing  of  the  Drina, 
the  Save  and  the  Danube.  Bloody  encounters  took  place  at 
Obrenovac,  Ostruznica,  Belgrade,  Smederevo  and  Ram.  At 
all  these  places  the  first  enemy's  detachments,  after  having 
succeeded  in  crossing  the  rivers,  were  annihilated  before 
being  able  to  secure  a  footing  or  to  develop  their  front. 
Only  after  seven  days  of  incessant  battle  of  the  most  stub- 
born character  did  the  enemy  succeed  in  forcing  the  rivers. 


344 


THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA 


The  weight  of  his  heavy  guns  was  telling,  the  English, 
French  and  Russian  batteries  of  heavy  artillery  defending 
Belgrade  were  silenced  on  the  first  day  and  their  ramparts 
shattered  to  dust,  thus  leaving  the  whole  burden  of  defense 
upon  the  Serbian  infantry.  Notwithstanding  all  this,  the 
defense  was  splendid  and  called  forth  the  admiration  of  Ger- 
man correspondents  in  the  enemy's  army.  The  enemy  suf- 
fered very  heavy  losses,  and  was  only  able  to  advance  owing 
to  his  numbers,  which  outflanked  the  Serbian  positions  and 
pounded  to  pieces  Serbian  defensive  works.  But  every  new 
position  was  fully  taken  advantage  of  by  the  Serbians,  who 
retreated  contesting  every  inch  and  ceding  only  inch  by  inch 
their  territory. 

On  the  14th  of  October  the  Bulgarians,  repeating  their 
treachery  of  191 3,  attacked  the  Serbians  on  the  entire  front 
without  previously  declaring  war.  The  Bulgars  had  concen- 
trated against  Serbia  seven  divisions,  each  consisting  of  six 
regiments  and  one  brigade,  of  infantry,  in  all  176  battalions 
of  infantry;  whereas  Serbia  was  only  able  to  oppose  them 
with  78  battalions.  In  spite  of  being  so  greatly  outnumbered, 
the  Serbians  offered  stubborn  resistance,  and  every  retreat 
of  the  Serbs  on  the  Bulgarian  front  was  caused  by  the  pres- 
sure of  the  Austro-Germans.  Thus  on  the  river  Timok 
during  twelve  days,  from  October  13th  to  24th,  the  Bul- 
garians penetrated  only  one  and  a  half  miles  into  Serbian 
territory,  all  their  attacks  being  bloodily  repulsed.  But  when 
Austro-Germans  penetrated  deeper  to  the  south,  the  Serbs 
ordered  the  evacuation  of  Negotin,  Zaecar  and  Knazevac. 
In  the  direction  of  the  valley  of  the  Nishava  the  Serbians 
and  the  Bulgarians  had  nearly  equal  forces,  therefore  all 
Bulgarian  attacks  were  very  costly  and  fruitless.  Nowhere 
were  the  Bulgars  able  to  dislodge  the  Serbs  by  their  own 
forces;  these  were  obliged  to  retreat  before  the  Bulgars  in 
view  of  the  situation  on  the  other  fronts. 

On  the  southern  part  of  their  front  the  Bulgars  attacked 
the  Serbs  on  the  front  of  Vlassina,  east  of  Vrana,  with 
sixteen  battalions,  where  the  Serbs  had  only  four  or  five 
battalions.  They  penetrated  into  the  valley  of  the  Morava, 
but  their  advance  was  stopped.     Further  south  the  Serbs 


THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA  345 

had  only  two  newly  organized  divisions,  whose  battalions  had 
no  more  than  600  rifles,  with  very  small  numbers  of  machine 
guns  and  artillery  pieces.  The  Bulgars  had  there  four  bri- 
gades belonging  to  the  5th  and  7th  divisions  and  parts  of 
the  2nd  and  nth  divisions.  Therefore  their  advance  to 
Skoplje  and  Veles  could  not  be  prevented,  and  they  occupied 
both  towns  after  much  sanguinary  fighting.  The  Bulgars 
sent  strong  numbers  to  Kacanik  Pass  and  to  Karadag,  but 
their  advance  was  stopped  there,  until  circumstances  on  the 
other  front  obliged  the  Serbs  to  abandon  those  positions  also. 

Always  fighting  and  retreating  until  the  end  of  October, 
the  Serbians  entertained  the  hope  that  the  British  and  French 
troops  would  arrive  in  time,  and  in  joining  with  the  Serbian 
army  would  be  able  to  frustrate  all  enemy  schemes.  Not 
only  were  the  military  operations  influenced  by  this  hope, 
but  the  Serbian  population  also  remained  calm  until  the  last 
moment,  and  very  few  took  any  measures  to  protect  their 
lives  or  to  save  a  portion  of  their  property  by  escaping  to 
Greece  and  allied  countries. 

In  the  first  days  of  November  the  Serbian  headquarters 
became  aware  that  the  Allied  contingents  would  not  be  able 
to  join  the  Serbian  army  north  of  Skoplje,  therefore  the 
higher  command  resolved  to  abandon  the  northern  front  al- 
together, and  always  fighting,  to  retreat  to  the  south,  in 
order  to  join  the  Allies  and  continue  the  resistance.  The 
Serbian  army,  pressed  by  overwhelming  enemy  forces,  had 
to  execute  the  passage  over  the  Western  and  Southern  Mo- 
rava,  and  these  movements  were  executed  by  both  armies 
without  leaving  either  men  or  material  in  enemies'  hands. 

The  Bulgars,  by  being  in  possession  of  the  passes  Koncul 
and  Kacanik,  cut  off  the  communication  of  the  Serbian  army 
with  the  Allies,  who  by  now  had  reached  Krivolak,  on  the 
railway  line  from  Salonika.  In  order  to  join  the  Allies  and 
beat  the  Bulgarian  forces  occupying  the  passes,  it  was  nec- 
essary to  extricate  the  Serbian  army  from  both  the  valleys 
of  the  Southern  and  Western  Morava.  This  was  executed 
in  spite  of  enormous  difficulties,  there  being  only  two  travers- 
able roads  for  the  retreat  of  the  entire  army.  The  situation 
was  saved  by  a  bold  attack  of  the  Serbian  3rd  army  in  the 


346 


THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA 


flank  of  the  enemy,  but  the  retreat  was  continued  under 
the  heaviest  pressure  of  the  enemy. 

Nevertheless,  headquarters  was  able  to  concentrate  five 
divisions  and  two  brigades  against  the  Bulgars  for  the  bat- 
tle for  the  possession  of  the  passes.  With  these  forces,  the 
Serbs  attacked  the  Bulgars  on  the  front  Novo  Brdo-Kacanik. 
The  main  enemy  positions  were  on  the  Velika  Planina  and 
Zegovac  mountains.  In  fierce  battles  from  November  17th 
to  2 1st,  the  Serbs  took  the  Zegovac  mountain,  and  their 
operations  against  Velika  Planina  were  also  very  successful. 
The  Bulgars  were  in  a  rather  critical  situation  and  began 
to  give  way  on  the  northern  portion  of  the  front.  Every- 
thing pointed  to  the  complete  success  of  the  Kacanik  opera- 
tion, if  the  Serbs  had  had  time  to  develop  their  advantage. 
But  again  the  pressure  of  the  Austro-Germans  was  brought 
to  bear  upon  the  whole  military  situation.  On  the  21st  of 
November  the  Austro-Germans  were  already  in  the  posses- 
sion of  the  Prepolac,  and  were  attacking  the  Serbs  defending 
the  Tenedol  pass  on  the  road  to  Pristina.  Therefore  the 
whole  operation  was  abandoned.  But  still  the  Serbian  suc- 
cesses on  the  Kacanik  front  enabled  them  to  retire  on  the  left 
bank  of  the  Sitnica  river  unmolested  by  the  enemy,  and 
without  leaving  in  his  hands  either  arms  or  ammunition. 
Thus  the  Serbs  definitely  failed  to  join  the  Allies,  who, 
being  small  in  numbers,  were  unable  to  push  further  than 
Krivolack,  and  soon  were  obliged  to  beat  a  retreat. 

It  was  on  the  memorable  Kossovo  Field  that  the  Serbian 
army  and  nation  realized  that  the  great  tragedy  of  her  his- 
tory was  to  be  repeated  once  again.  The  curtain  rose  upon 
the  last  act  of  the  Serbian  tragedy.  Fate  had  yet  some  fear- 
ful sufferings  in  store  for  them.  In  191 5,  as  in  1389,  on 
the  eve  of  the  battle  of  Kossovo,  the  Serbian  king  and  na- 
tion were  forced  to  choose  between  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
and  Earth;  to  make  peace  with  the  hereditary  foes  and  to 
betray  the  noble  cause  of  European  freedom  and  liberty  for 
which  they  had  fought  so  long.  Now,  as  then,  the  Serbs  did 
not  hesitate.  They  preferred  honor  and  martyrdom  to 
shameful  peace  and  treason.  Like  true  heroes  of  Kossovo, 
without  fear  or  reproach,  they  had  accepted  battle  on  a  front 


THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA  347 

800  miles  long,  and  for  two  months  they  had  kept  in  abey- 
ance the  overwhelming  forces  of  three  military  states  single- 
handed.  An  ally — Greece — betrayed  them;  the  others, 
through  blunders,  were  unable  to  come  in  time  to  be  of  as- 
sistance. The  struggle  proved  vain;  and  the  Serbian  state, 
built  up  by  so  much  fighting  and  noble  self-sacrifice,  was 
crushed  by  a  shameful  coalition  of  all  its  old-time  foes. 

BY  ROBERT  MACHRAY 

Serbia,  at  the  outset  of  the  present  War,  was  far  from 
strong,  even  relatively,  and  if  during  its  initial  months  she 
was  amazingly  successful  in  repulsing  the  first  and  second 
Austrian  invasions,  she  achieved  her  victory  at  a  price  which 
was  very  heavy  to  so  small  and  war-worn  a  State  and  weak- 
ened her  sensibly.  This  being  the  case,  her  even  more  won- 
derful success  in  throwing  back  in  absolute  disaster  the 
third  invasion  by  the  Austrians,  who  had  made  sure  of  her 
ruin,  will  remain  one  of  the  great,  heroic  stories  of  all  time. 
But  her  losses  were  again  most  serious  and  hard  to  bear. 
Not  only  did  she  suffer  in  men  and  in  war  material,  but  the 
ruthless  invaders,  adding  their  own  profound  hatred  of  the 
Serbians  to  their  faithful  copying  of  the  Prussian  model,  had 
devastated  and  laid  waste  all  the  northwest  part  of  the  coun- 
try— one  of  the  best  districts  of  poor  Serbia — which  they 
had  temporarily  occupied,  deliberately  outraging  and  mur- 
dering with  fiendish  cruelty  its  civilian  population.  At  the 
end  of  1914  Serbia,  though  triumphant,  was  much  weaker 
than  before,  and  was  already  become  a  tragic  land — with 
the  shadows  deepening  over  her.  Bitterly  chagrined  and  hu- 
miliated by  her  overthrow  at  the  hands  of  her  little  but  in- 
domitable adversary,  Austria  lost  no  time  in  concentrating 
another  large  army  on  the  Danube  for  the  purpose  of  making 
a  fourth  invasion,  which  was  to  be  in  such  tremendous 
strength  in  men  and  guns  as  should  quickly  make  an  end  of 
Serbia.  During  last  January  many  definite  statements  were 
in  circulation  regarding  this  projected  new  Austrian  of- 
fensive, and  the  Serbians,  in  spite  of  all  their  losses  and  suf- 
ferings, bravely  determined  to  resist  it  to  the  uttermost. 
Their  Allies  were  still  unable  to  assist  them  by  dispatching 


348 


THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA 


large  bodies  of  troops  to  fight  alongside  of  their  own,  but 
France,  Russia,  and  England  sent  naval  missions  with  guns 
and  ammunition  for  the  defense  of  Belgrade  or  to  be  placed 
wherever  their  services  would  be  most  useful.  Austria, 
however,  found  it  necessary  to  defer  the  contemplated  attack 
for  some  time — for  several  months,  as  it  turned  out — be- 
cause her  attention  was  almost  entirely  occupied,  first  by  the 
great  Austro-German  campaign  against  Russia  in  the  Car- 
pathians, Galicia,  Poland,  and  Lithuania,  and  secondly  by 
her  defensive  operations  against  Italy,  who  joined  the  En- 
tente in  May. 

It  was  not  until  the  commencement  of  October  that 
Serbia  was  called  on  to  face  her  enemy,  who  was  no  longer 
alone,  and  the  interval  might  have  sufficed  for  some  recupera- 
tion, which  at  best  could  only  have  been  slight,  had  it  not 
been  that  for  by  far  the  most  of  it  she  had  to  fight  foes  of 
a  different  but  extremely  formidable  kind.  On  being  driven 
out  of  Valievo  in  December,  1914,  the  Austrians  had  left 
behind  them  a  frightful  legacy  in  the  form  of  typhus  and 
other  malignant  maladies,  and  these  diseases  attacked  the 
unfortunate  Serbians,  spread  all  over  the  country,  and 
claimed  thousands  of  victims.  Utterly  unprepared  to  com- 
bat with  any  prospect  of  success  these  fresh  and  more  in- 
sidious enemies,  which  threatened  her  with  extermination, 
Serbia  sent  forth  a  cry  for  help,  which  was  heard  and 
responded  to  in  Great  Britain,  France,  Russia,  the  United 
States  and  other  lands.  The  Red  Cross  did  what  it  could; 
other  organizations,  notably  the  society  of  women  doctors 
known  as  the  Scottish  Women's  Hospitals,  bestirred  them- 
selves actively  in  raising,  equipping,  and  forwarding  hospital 
units  to  the  scene;  and  many  private  persons,  touched  to  the 
heart  by  o'er-true  tales  of  Serbia's  plight,  furnished  money 
for  the  much-needed  medical  supplies. 

With  her  army  reduced  by  war  and  her  whole  popula- 
tion diminished  and  enfeebled  by  disease,  tragedy  already  lay 
heavy  on  the  little  country  when,  in  October,  Serbia  con- 
fronted the  fourth,  and  infinitely  most  menacing,  invasion  of 
her  soil.  A  small  State,  but  a  great  spirit,  she  rose  to  the 
occasion  nobly.     Her  people,  albeit  peasants,  are  a  fighting 


THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA  349 

race;  they  fought  the  Turks  in  1806,  1876,  1877,  and  191 2, 
and  the  Bulgarians  in  1885  and  1913.  In  many  respects 
they  resemble  their  Slav  kinsmen,  the  Russians,  but  are  some- 
what more  progressive,  more  up  to  date,  if  the  phrase  may  be 
used  about  either  of  them.  Like  the  Russian,  the  Serbian 
peasant  is  a  fine  soldier ;  both  have  the  same  fearlessness  of 
death,  the  same  patient  endurance  of  hardships,  the  same  de- 
votion whether  to  their  leaders  or  their  cause.  The  land 
which  the  Serbian  farms  is  his  own,  and  that  made  for  in- 
dependence; all  Serbia  is  covered  with  "crofts"  of  from  ten 
to  twenty  acres,  and  that  made  for  a  nation  of  free  men.  The 
passionate  desire  of  every  Serbian  was  to  continue  to  be  free. 
But  their  territory  stood  in  the  way  of  vast  ambitions — 
right  in  the  path  of  the  German  Drang  nach  Osten,  a  position 
of  deadly  peril.  With  a  certain  amount  of  assistance  the 
Serbians  could  have  held  the  gate  of  the  East,  as  their  coun- 
try was,  against  all  comers,  and  they  knew  it.  They  had 
puissant  Allies,  one  of  whom  at  least  was  vitally  interested 
in  keeping  the  gate  shut,  and  they  looked  to  them  for  that 
certain  amount  of  assistance.  As  early  as  last  July  Serbia 
asked  Great  Britain  specially  for  forces  in  numbers  suffi- 
cient to  help  her.  But  whether  they  got  the  necessary  as- 
sistance or  not,  the  Serbians  took  their  stand;  if  they  did 
not  get  it,  they  were  ready  to  meet  their  fate,  doing  the 
best  that  was  in  their  power. 

It  is  known  that  they  might  have  avoided  this  fourth  in- 
vasion; that  is,  on  terms.  Serbia  was  offered  a  separate 
peace  by  the  enemy  but  declined  to  accept  it.  She  was  re- 
solved to  live  free  or  die.  "It  is  better  to  die  in  beauty  than 
live  in  shame,"  said  Pashitch,  her  Prime  Minister,  and  these 
immortal  words  expressed  her  very  soul.  A  few  weeks  after 
they  had  been  uttered  and  had  gone  echoing  round  the  globe, 
another  Serbian,  Vassitch,  the  splendid  soldier  the  memory 
of  whose  glorious  defense  of  the  Babuna  Pass  will  endure 
forever,  said,  when  the  agony  of  Serbia  had  come  full  upon 
her:  "The  Serbians  will  await  at  the  foot  of  their  cross 
the  hour  of  crucifixion,  without  deserting.  Dying,  they  will 
make  their  sacrifice,  and  will  live  again  in  history  as  an 
example  to  future  generations." 


35o 


THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA 


Almost  unperceived,  it  might  seem,  what  may  be  called 
the  center  of  the  War  shifted  from  Russia,  in  which  it  had 
visibly  lain  from  May  to  September,  to  the  Balkans  towards 
the  close  of  the  latter  month.  Universal  attention  was  still 
fastened  on  the  progress  of  the  tremendous  Austro-German 
offensive  against  Russia.  The  army  group  of  Marshal 
Mackensen  still  had  its  place  in  official  German  reports  of 
actions  in  the  Eastern  theater,  and  his  name  figured  in  them 
for  some  time  after  he  had  transferred  his  energies  to  the 
Serbian  area.  According  to  a  gleeful  article  in  the  Berliner 
Tageblatt,  this  deception  was  maintained  for  the  purpose 
of  concealing  the  movements  into  the  south  of  Hungary  of 
German  troops  that  were  intended  for  the  invasion  of  Ser- 
bia, and  was  absolutely  successful  in  accomplishing  its  ob- 
ject. This  journal  went  on  complacently  to  remark  that,  of 
course,  the  secret  could  not  be  kept  permanently;  but  when 
at  length  the  foreign  Press  discovered  there  was  to  be  this 
incursion  into  Serbia,  under  the  command  of  Mackensen, 
the  revelation  did  not  matter,  as  the  concentration  on  the 
Serbian  frontier  of  Austro-German  forces  had  already  been 
completed.  Serbia  had  wind  early  of  these  preparations, 
and  informed  Great  Britain  of  what  was  going  on;  but  the 
Entente  Powers  do  not  appear,  it  must  be  said,  to  have 
realized  adequately  the  potentialities  of  the  situation — not, 
it  is  certain,  until  too  late.  Thus,  when  the  full  fury  of  the 
storm  broke  over  Serbia,  she  had  to  stand  up  against  it  prac- 
tically alone.  During  the  first  two  weeks  of  September 
Mackensen  effected  the  desired  combination  of  German  and 
Austrian  troops  north  of  the  Danube  and  the  Save,  and  in 
the  third  week  of  the  month  German  guns  were  shelling 
Semendria,  the  Serbian  fortified  town  which  also  is  known 
as  Smederivo;  but  probably  no  one  in  it,  in  Serbia,  or 
among  the  other  Allies,  conceived  that  the  arrangements 
of  the  Austro-Germans  were  so  perfected  that  within  the 
next  three  weeks  both  it  and  Belgrade,  and  even  Nish,  would 
be  in  the  possession  of  the  enemy,  and  the  German  Drang 
nach  Osten  all  too  plainly  in  process  of  accomplishment. 

It  was  impossible  for  the  Entente  Powers  to  be  alto- 
gether blind  to  the  gravity  of  the  position  which  would  be 


THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA  351 

created  by  a  successful  Austro-German  attack  on  Serbia,  but 
for  a  long  time — for  far  too  long  a  time — they  sought  to 
fortify  her  against  it  solely,  practically,  by  diplomatic  ef- 
forts, in  which  Great  Britain  took  a  leading  part.  They 
endeavored  to  form  a  union  of  the  Balkan  States  as  against 
Germany  by  trying  to  placate  Bulgaria,  the  dissident  State, 
at  the  expense  of  the  others,  who,  however,  were  in  return 
promised  great  compensations,  but  contingent  on  the  winning 
of  the  War  by  the  Entente.  To  cut  short  a  long  story  of 
intrigue  and  treachery,  Bulgaria,  in  the  person  of  her  King, 
had  made  up  her  mind,  probably  owing  to  Austro-German 
victories  in  Galicia,  Poland,  and  elsewhere,  coupled  with 
British  failure  in  the  Dardanelles,  that  the  Entente  would 
be  beaten,  and  therefore  she  sided  with  Germany.  She 
dissembled  for  months,  but  her  mobilization,  which  took 
place  while  those  German  shells  were  raining  on  Semendria, 
at  last  showed  the  direction  of  her  policy,  and  presently  her 
troops  were  being  concentrated  on  Serbia's  eastern  boundary. 
She  still  dissimulated,  protesting  that  she  had  no  aggressive 
intentions  whatever,  but  the  Entente  Powers  took  alarm — 
somewhat  late  in  the  day ! 

At  the  outset  it  seemed  that  all  was  well.  Two  days  after 
the  issue  of  the  order  for  the  mobilization  of  Bulgaria, 
Greece  began  mobilizing  her  army,  and  as  M.  Venezelos  pub- 
licly stated  that  this  was  done  as  a  precautionary  measure, 
because  it  was  common  knowledge  that  Bulgaria  did  not  in- 
tend to  abide  by  the  status  quo  in  the  Balkans,  the  Entente 
believed  that  Greek  help  for  Serbia  was  assured,  and  all  the 
more  from  the  fact  that  Greece  was  under  treaty  obligations 
to  defend  Serbia  against  Bulgaria.  Venezelos  went  so  far 
as  to  affirm  that  if  the  treaty  had  not  existed  the  true  in- 
terests of  Greece  were  bound  up  with  the  success  of  the  En- 
tente Powers,  and  consequently  she  must  take  her  stand 
with  them  in  the  War.  He  invited  the  Allies  to  send  to 
Salonika  a  force  of  150,000  men,  this  being  the  number 
Serbia  had  covenanted  under  the  treaty  to  contribute  to  any 
joint  action  in  the  field  by  herself  and  Greece  against  Bul- 
garia, but  which  she  was  not  in  a  position  to  produce  owing 
to  her  having  to  fight  the  Austro-Germans. 


352  THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA 

But  King  Constantine  intervened,  and  Venezelos  re- 
signed, and  the  hopes  of  the  Entente  were  shattered.  Greece 
announced  that  she  would  remain  neutral,  this  neutrality 
towards  the  Entente  being  defined  as  of  the  most  benevolent 
kind.  After  entering  a  formal  protest,  she  permitted  the 
troops  of  the  Allies  to  disembark  at  Salonika.  On  the  12th 
of  October  she  categorically  refused  Serbia's  request  for 
assistance ;  by  that  date  events  had  marched,  Serbia  had  been 
invaded,  and  was  enduring  with  high  courage  and  fortitude 
the  first  days  of  her  dreadful  agony.  Belgrade  in  flames, 
smoking  towns  and  villages,  and  a  ruined  countryside,  south 
of  the  rivers  that  were  her  northern  frontier,  with  its  popu- 
lation in  flight,  had  proclaimed  the  beginning  of  the  immo- 
lation of  Serbia  on  the  horrible  altars  of  German  ambition 
and  German  Kultar. 

With  the  beginning  of  October  came  the  development  in 
force  of  the  Austro-German  offensive  against  Serbia  on  the 
north,  and  its  plan  of  operations  had  been  carefully  thought 
out  long  beforehand  in  the  thorough  and  efficient  German 
manner.  Under  Mackensen  there  were  two  large  armies, 
commanded  respectively  by  General  von  Gallwitz,  the  Ger- 
man leader  who  had  won  fame  in  the  campaign  in  Russia  by 
forcing  the  Narew,  and  by  General  Kovess  von  Kovessaza, 
an  Austrian  soldier  of  distinction.  Gallwitz  covered  the  line 
of  the  Danube  from  Orsava  to  a  point  opposite  Semendria 
with  forces  exclusively  German ;  Kovess's  troops,  partly  Aus- 
trian and  partly  German,  the  former  predominating,  ex- 
tended from  the  point  opposite  Semendria  along  the  Danube, 
the  Save,  and  the  Lower  Drina;  while  on  the  Upper  Drina 
an  Austrian  army  was  in  position  near  Vishegrad,  over 
against  Ushitze.  The  right  wing  of  Gallwitz  touched  the 
left  wing  of  Kovess,  and  MackenseiVs  scheme  was  that  simul- 
taneously with  a  general  advance  along  the  front  these  two 
wings  together  should  move  up  the  Morava  Valley,  and  cap- 
ture the  railway  running  south  to  Nish  and  thence  south- 
east to  Sofia-Constantinople  and  south  to  Salonika.  He 
was,  no  doubt,  well  informed  as  to  what  he  might  expect 
from  Bulgarian  cooperation  in  the  Timok  Valley,  the  Nish- 
ava  Valley,  and  in  Macedonia.     His  intention  naturally  was 


THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA  353 

to  defeat  the  Serbians  in  a  decisive  battle,  and  he  hoped  to 
maneuver  them  into  such  a  position  that  his  object  would 
be  achieved.  He  had  difficult  terrain  to  surmount,  and  a 
desperate  resistance  by  the  Serbians  to  overcome,  but  he 
had  taken  these  factors  into  account.  He  knew  in  truth  from 
the  start  that  Serbia,  attacked  on  all  sides  with  more  than 
double  the  numbers  she  could  command  and  with  far  superior 
artillery,  was  definitely  in  his  hands  unless  her  Allies  could 
give  her  help  sufficient  to  withstand  him.  She  did  not  get 
that  help,  and  he  and  the  Bulgarians  overran  and  occupied 
her  territory,  but  neither  he  himself  nor  they  brought  about 
that  decisive  battle,  about  two-thirds  of  the  Serbian  forces 
making  good  their  retreat. 

For  several  days  early  in  October  the  Serbian  works  on 
the  riverine  frontier  were  heavily  shelled,  and  attempts 
which  though  unsuccessful  were  persistent  were  made  to 
force  a  passage.  As  the  bombardment  increased  in  intensity 
and  more  and  more  determined  efforts  to  get  across  the 
rivers  were  made,  Serbia  realized  that  the  long-expected  seri- 
ous attack  was  in  progress,  and  every  Serbian  braced  him- 
self to  meet  it.  King  Peter,  according  to  an  Austrian  state- 
ment which  may  be  accepted  as  authentic,  issued  on  the  2nd 
of  October  an  Order  of  the  Day  that  expressed  the  feeling  of 
himself  and  his  country.  He  said  he  was  well  aware  that 
every  Serbian  was  ready  to  die  for  his  native  land;  as  for 
himself,  old  age  prevented  him  from  leading  his  armies  in 
this  struggle  for  life  and  death.  "I  am  a  weak  old  man," 
he  went  on,  pathetically,  "who  can  send  only  his  blessings 
to  his  Serbian  soldiers,  to  the  women  and  children.  If  this 
fresh  struggle  should  end  in  defeat,  it  will  be  a  glorious  death 
for  us  all."  This  Order  is  melancholy  but  not  uninspiring, 
and  it  is  curious  to  observe  in  it  the  same  somber  yet  splendid 
note  which  pervades  so  many  other  Serbian  allusions  to  this 
agonizing  contest — not  death  or  glory,  but  death  and  glory. 
The  strange  thing  about  this  Order  is  that  King  Peter  made 
no  allusion  in  it  to  the  assistance  that  was  anticipated  from 
the  Allies,  though  he  must  have  known  the  tenor  of  Sir 
Edward  Grey's  speech  which  promised  aid,  and  he  surely 
had  heard  that  French  and  British  officers  had  arrived  at 

W..  VOL    III.— 23. 


354 


THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA 


Salonika  on  the  ist  of  October,  the  day  before  it  was  issued, 
and  were  making  arrangements  for  the  landing  of  troops. 
These  landings  began  on  the  5th  of  that  month.  The  news 
flashed  throughout  Serbia,  bringing  such  joy  and  gladness 
that  Nish  and  many  other  of  her  towns  and  villages  deco- 
rated the  public  buildings  with  the  flags  of  the  Allies — poor 
emblems  which  afterwards  were  found  still  flying  by  the 
victorious  enemy  on  his  entrance  into  these  places.  What 
wreck  of  great  hopes !    How  piteous  and  sad  it  all  was ! 

On  the  afternoon  of  the  day  of  the  first  landing  of  forces 
by  the  Entente  Powers  at  Salonika,  Belgrade  was  subjected 
to  a  tremendous  bombardment,  which  continued  for  three 
days  and  reduced  to  ruins  considerable  portions  of  it,  not 
even  the  hospitals  being  spared.  In  a  semi-official  com- 
munique Serbia  stated  that  the  Austro-Germans,  unable  to 
demoralize  her  troops  in  their  positions  on  the  Danube  and 
the  Save,  endeavored  to  destroy  the  city  systematically  and 
annihilate  its  population  by  firing  thousands  of  shells  on  the 
town,  which  was  "open,"  that  is,  unfortified.  The  bom- 
bardment, it  was  said,  was  carried  out  methodically  with  the 
object  of  killing  as  many  persons  as  possible  in  the  city 
and  of  creating  a  panic.  To  further  their  own  diabolical 
ends,  it  was  declared,  the  Germans,  before  the  shelling  of 
Belgrade  itself  began,  placed  a  curtain  of  fire  upon  the  sub- 
urbs and  the  roads  leading  into  the  country,  so  that  civilians 
trying  to  flee  might  be  destroyed  or  thrown  back  into  the 
town.  In  other  words,  the  attack  on  the  Serbian  capital 
was  a  characteristic  exhibition  of  German  "frightfulness," 
and  to  bring  it  to  a  close  before  Belgrade  was  utterly  de- 
stroyed the  Serbian  army  evacuated  the  city  on  the  8th  of 
October.  Of  course  the  Germans  did  not  publish  any  of 
these  shocking  details  of  their  savage  brutality.  They  an- 
nounced that  on  the  6th  and  the  7th  they  forced  the  crossing 
of  the  Danube,  Save,  and  Drina  at  various  points,  and  had 
established  themselves  firmly  on  the  Serbian  side  of  these 
rivers,  Belgrade  being  captured  apparently  with  no  great 
difficulty.  It  afterwards  came  out  that  the  capital  was  not 
taken  without  a  desperate  struggle,  which  went  on  even  in 
the  streets  and  from  house  to  house,  and  in  which  not  a  Ser- 


THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA  355 

bian  asked  quarter  and  women  and  children  died  fighting. 
Nor  did  the  enemy  achieve  the  crossing  of  the  rivers  till  after 
a  magnificent  resistance  on  the  part  of  the  defenders  at  every 
point.  On  the  6th,  3,000  Germans  and  Austrians  who  had 
got  across  the  Danube  near  Belgrade  were  hurled  back,  only 
500  escaping,  the  rest  being  killed  or  captured,  and  some- 
what similar  successes  fell  to  the  Serbians  elsewhere.  But 
in  the  end  the  big  guns  of  the  Austro-Germans  prevailed,  and 
the  Serbians  were  driven  out  of  the  river  trenches,  only, 
however,  to  withdraw  to  the  hills  behind. 

Despite  the  merciless  rain  of  shells,  multitudes  of  the 
citizens  of  Belgrade  had  managed  during  its  bombardment 
to  get  away — on  foot,  in  ox-wagons,  or  in  some  sort  of 
conveyance,  with  part  of  their  belongings;  but  the  weather 
was  bad,  rain  fell  heavily,  the  roads  were  deep  in  mud,  and 
the  misery  of  most  of  these  poor  creatures  was  indescribable. 
The  exodus  from  Belgrade  and  the  neighboring  towns  and 
villages  was  the  commencement  cf  the  flight  from  before 
the  enemy  of  what  was  left  of  a  people,  the  remnant  consist- 
ing of  old  men,  women,  and  children,  for  every  male  who 
could  hold  a  rifle  or  throw  a  bomb  was  in  the  fighting  line. 
As,  thanks  to  their  powerful  artillery,  the  Austro-Germans 
advanced,  slowly  yet  victoriously,  though  the  Serbian  armies 
of  the  north,  under  the  aged  and  ailing  Marshal  Putnik,  their 
Commander-in-Chief,  stubbornly  disputed  every  inch  of 
ground,  and  Semendria,  Ram,  Obrenovatz,  and  other  places 
on  the  frontier  were  occupied  by  the  invaders,  the  same 
dolorous  scenes  always  occurred — endless  processions  of  flee- 
ing refugees  in  motion  southward,  those  who  could  afford  it 
going  by  train  to  Nish,  others  in  carts,  and  the  rest,  the  vast 
majority  of  these  unfortunates,  plodding  laboriously  along 
the  roads  hour  after  hour  in  the  mud  and  rain,  carrying  the 
dearest  of  their  possessions  and  accompanied  by  their  small 
flocks  and  herds.  The  sacrifice  of  Serbia  was  begun,  and  it 
might  be  thought  that  her  agony  had  already  come  full  upon 
her,  but  it  was  to  deepen  with  every  day  that  passed. 

In  his  advance  up  the  Morava  Mackensen,  having  taken 
Semendria  on  the  nth  of  October,  three  days  later  captured 
Pojarevatz,  after  extremely  bitter  fighting  in  which  he  had 


356  THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA 

exceptional  losses.  The  Morava  Valley  was  now  open  to 
him,  but  his  march  forward  was  not  rapid,  as  the  Serbians 
did  not  cease  to  oppose  him  in  the  mountainous  region  of 
Podunavlie  lying  south  of  the  fallen  fortress.  By  the  23rd 
of  October,  in  spite  of  the  tenacious  courage  with  which  he 
was  fought,  he  had,  however,  pressed  on  beyond  Rakinatz 
on  the  road  to  Petrovatz,  and  had  reached  the  south  bank  of 
the  Jasenitza.  About  the  same  date  his  left  wing  crossed 
the  Danube  at  Orsava.  In  the  fourth  week  of  that  month 
he  took  Livaditza  on  the  Morava  plain,  stormed  Svilajnatz 
on  the  30th,  and  on  November  1st  was  in  Kragujevatz,  which 
the  Serbians  had  evacuated  after  setting  fire  to  the  arsenal 
and  destroying  the  military  stores  they  could  not  remove. 
He  had  had  to  battle  for  every  position,  and  more  than  once 
was  severely  checked;  an  engagement  which  took  place  on 
the  hills  before  Kragujevatz,  and  in  which  the  famous  Shu- 
madia  division  of  the  Serbian  army  figured  splendidly,  was 
a  distinct  reverse. 

On  the  nth  of  October  Bulgaria  had  dropped  the  mask, 
and  her  armies,  without  a  declaration  of  war,  invaded  the 
eastern  frontier  of  Serbia.  Feeling  between  the  two  Slav 
nations  of  the  Balkans  had  long  been  most  bitter;  during 
the  First  Balkan  War  it  appeared  to  be  assuaged,  but  that 
almost  immemorial  hatred  of  theirs  quickly  revived  because 
of  the  Serbian  occupation  of  Macedonia  in  and  after  that 
war,  and  with  greater  intensity  than  before.  The  war  that 
the  Bulgarians  now  waged  was  in  a  large  measure  one  of  ex- 
termination. They  put  into  the  field  over  300,000  men, 
against  whom  the  Serbians  could  place  little  more  than  a 
third  of  that  number,  as  their  main  forces  were  in  the  north  ;t 
the  struggle  was  far  too  unequal,  and  the  result  was  in- 
evitable. In  this  area  the  resistance  of  the  Serbians  was  of 
an  even  more  determined  nature,  if  that  were  possible,  than 
in  the  north,  but  it  was'  beaten  down.  The  first  efforts  o  f 
the  Bulgarians  were  directed  to  gaining  control  of  that  part 
of  the  Belgrade-Constantinople  railway  which  lay  between 
the  frontier  and  Nish  and  the  portion  of  the  Nish-Salonika 
line  lying  in  Serbian  territory.  By  the  17th  of  October  they 
had  made  good  their  hold  on  the  latter  from  Vrania  to 


THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA  357 

Ristovatz,  took  Veles  on  the  20th,  lost  it  two  days  later,  but 
recaptured  it  on  the  29th.  Uskub  was  taken  on  the  22nd. 
They  also  were  successful  in  their  attack  on  the  other  rail- 
way, Kniashevatz  and  Pirot  both  falling  into  their  hands 
on  the  28th,  and  Nish  itself  on  the  5th  of  November.  On 
the  northeast,  in  the  third  week  of  October,  they  succeeded 
in  entering  Negotin,  Prahovo,  and  Kladovo,  and  acquired 
the  Serbian  side  of  the  Danube  over  against  Rumania,  thus 
permitting  the  Austrians  forthwith  to  send  munitions  to  them 
and  to  the  Turks. 

Dr.  Momchiloff,  President  of  the  Bulgarian  Sobranje, 
spent  several  days  on  this  front,  and  described  the  fighting 
as  exceeding  in  ferocity  anything  ever  seen  in  previous  Bal- 
kan wars,  terrible  as  they  had  been.  He  stated  that  the 
Bulgarians  found  in  the  Serbian  trenches  old  men,  women, 
and  children  acting  as  bomb-throwers,  and  that  in  many  cases 
they  were  "compelled  to  annihilate"  whole  villages,  with  all 
their  inhabitants,  because  of  the  hostility  of  the  population. 
According  to  German  newspapers,  this  was  not  the  only  area 
in  which,  after  the  forcing  of  the  rivers  in  the  north,  civilians 
shared  in  the  conflict.  The  Frankfurter  Zcitung  recorded 
the  fact  that  the  "war  in  Serbia  had  become  a  savage  con- 
test of  the  people,"  and  a  Vienna  journal  reported  that  the 
campaign  resembled  those  of  "ancient  times  in  which  not  one 
stone  was  left  upon  another."  How  dark  is  the  picture  these 
words  conjure  up!  To  German  "frightfulness"  add  Bul- 
garian hatred  in  face  of  Serbian  desperation,  and  something 
of  the  horror  of  the  tragedy  will  be  understood.  Serbia  had 
had  a  good  harvest,  but  the  enemy  seized  it  all ;  famine  stalked 
through  the  land,  and  many  perished  of  starvation.  The 
strain  Serbia  was  enduring  was  set  forth  on  the  26th  of  Oc- 
tober in  a  telegram  sent  by  M.  Pashitch  to  London ;  it  read : 

"Serbia  is  making  superhuman  efforts  to  defend  her  ex- 
istence, in  response  to  the  advice  and  desire  of  her  great  Ally. 
For  this  she  is  condemned  to  death  by  the  Austro-Germans 
and  Bulgarians.  For  twenty  days  our  common  enemies  have 
tried  to  annihilate  us.  In  spite  of  the  heroism  of  our  sol- 
diers our  resistance  cannot  be  expected  to  be  maintained  in- 
definitely.   We  beg  you,  the  many  friends  of  Serbia  in  Eng- 


358 


THE  CRUSHING  OF  SERBIA 


land,  to  do  all  that  you  possibly  can  to  insure  your  troops 
reaching  us  that  they  may  help  our  army,  and  that  we  may 
defend  together  that  common  cause  which  is  now  so  gravely 
menaced." 

The  common  cause  was  indeed  gravely  menaced.  The 
crushing  of  Serbia  proceeded  apace,  and  shortly  after  the 
middle  of  November  the  enemy  obtained  complete  posses- 
sion of  the  Belgrade-Nish  railway,  his  engineers  were  hard 
at  work  repairing  the  line,  and  easy  communication  with  the 
Bosporus  and  Asia  Minor  was  only  a  question  of  a  few 
weeks'  time.  The  gate  of  the  East  had  been  thrown  wide 
open  by  the  Germans,  some  part  of  their  dreams  had  come 
true,  and  all  the  brave  blood  that  had  been  shed  in  the  Dar- 
danelles to  gain  Constantinople  appeared  to  have  flowed  in 
vain.  The  threat  to  Egypt  was  evident ;  indeed,  Macken- 
sen's  forces  now  were  styled  "The  Army  of  Egypt,"  and  all 
Germany  exulted. 

In  the  other  areas  the  Serbian  armies,  always  resisting 
stubbornly  and  snatching  a  success  now  and  again,  continued 
to  be  pressed  back  steadily,  if  slowly,  upon  Montenegro,  who 
all  the  while  on  her  own  territory  had  been  bravely  fighting 
the  Austrians,  and  upon  Albania,  whose  tribes  as  a  rule  are 
none  too  friendly  to  the  Serbians.  On  the  30th  of  November 
the  Serbian  Government,  which  had  been  compelled  to  move 
westward  from  place  to  place  as  events  dictated,  reached 
Scutari,  then  held  by  the  Montenegrins,  and  established  itself 
there.  By  that  date  the  Austro-Germans  had  occupied  Novi 
Bazar  and  Mitrovitza,  and  the  Germans  and  Bulgarians  had 
taken  Prishtina,  according  to  an  official  communique,  after 
"ten  days'  bitter  fighting." 

German  Headquarters  announced  later  that  "with  the 
flight  of  the  scanty  remains  of  the  Serbian  army  into  the 
Albanian  mountains,  our  great  operations  against  the  same 
are  brought  to  a  close.  Our  object  of  effecting  communi- 
cation with  Bulgaria  and  the  Turkish  Empire  has  been  ac- 
complished." 


EXECUTION  OF  EDITH  CAVELL 

TEUTONIC  OBSTINACY   IN   ITS   UGLIEST  MOOD 

OCTOBER    I2TH 

G.  DeLEVAL  BRAND  WHITLOCK  HUGH  GIBSON 

H.  STIRLING  GAHAN  DR.  ALFRED  ZIMMERMANN 

Not  since  Napoleon  had  the  Duke  D'Enghien  shot  has  any  military 
execution  aroused  such  widespread  comment  as  that  of  Miss  Cavell. 
She  was  an  English  head-nurse  in  Brussels  who  aided  in  managing 
a  system  by  which  British  and  Belgian  soldiers  were  enabled  to  escape 
secretly  from  Belgium.  Such  a  course  was  in  obvious  disobedience 
to  German  law;  but  the  sheer  impossibility  that  any  person,  not  utterly 
a  brute,  should  obey  German  law,  is  conveyed  as  in  a  lightning  flash 
by  one  of  the  few  phrases  that  have  been  disclosed  from  Miss  Cavell's 
defense.  "I  helped  them  for  fear  they  would  be  shot  if  I  didn't." 
German  lawlessness  of  the  "super"-beast !  While  shooting  his  vic- 
tims at  will  without  even  the  pretense  of  law,  he  insists  it  is  unlaw- 
ful for  their  own  countrymen  to  save  them  from  his  blind  wrath. 
So  Edith  Cavell  died  a  martyr.  Whether  in  shooting  her  the  Germans 
exceeded  their  own  brutal  law  is  wholly  unimportant.  Most  lawyers 
have  declared  that  they  did  not.  But  the  foul  things  the  Germans  did 
in  Belgium  lose  no  jot  of  their  foulness  because  the  Germans  made 
laws  to  cover  some  of  them. 

The  height  of  execration  roused  by  the  Cavell  case  depended,  how- 
ever, on  something  far  other  than  its  legal  status.  It  arose  from 
her  sex  and  her  high  character.  No  truly  cultured  race  could  ever 
slay  a  woman  for  a  deed  of  kindliness,  for  following  the  mother  in- 
stinct to  save  and  to  protect.  If  a  man-made  law  condemns  her,  real 
men  ignore  that  law.  Nothing  showed  more  sharply  the  gulf  between 
Germany  and  the  rest  of  the  world  than  the  fact  that  German  officials 
with  one  voice  insisted  on  enforcing  their  law  against  Miss  Cavell 
Worse  yet,  they  tried  to  escape  the  protests  which  they  knew  would 
come  from  disinterested  neutrals,  and  to  which  they  were  determined 
not  to  yield.  To  escape  those  protests,  they  dissembled,  and  they 
lied;  they  rushed  the  execution  through  suddenly  at  night,  giving 
the  condemned  woman  no  chance  to  communicate  with  friends.  They 
knew  well  how  public  sentiment  would  execrate  their  deed ;  but  being 
Prussians  they  thought  the  "frightfulness"  of  this  example  would 
aid  them  more  than  its  shamefulness  would  harm  them.  Thank  God, 
they  underestimated  the  courage  of  the  human  race! 

C.    F.    H. 


359 


360  EXECUTION  OF  EDITH  CAVELL 

BY  MAITRE  G.  DE  LEVAL 

Report  to   Mr.   Whitlock,    from   the    Belgian   Councilor  to  the  U.    S. 

Legation 

October  12,  10,15. 
Sir, 

AS  soon  as  the  Legation  received  an  intimation  that  Miss 
Cavell  was  arrested,  your  letter  of  August  31st  was 
sent  to  Baron  von  der  Lancken.  The  German  authorities 
were  by  that  letter  requested,  inter  alia,  to  allow  me  to  see 
Miss  Cavell,  so  as  to  have  all  necessary  steps  taken  for  her 
defense.  No  reply  being  received,  the  Legation,  on  Septem- 
ber 10th,  reminded  the  German  authorities  of  your  letter. 

The  German  reply,  sent  on  September  12th,  was  that  I 
would  not  be  allowed  to  see  Miss  Cavell,  but  that  Mr.  Braun, 
lawyer  at  the  Brussels  Court,  was  defending  her  and  was 
already  seeing  the  German  authorities  about  the  case. 

I  immediately  asked  Mr.  Braun  to  come  to  see  me  at  the 
Legation,  which  he  did  a  few  days  later.  He  informed  me 
that  personal  friends  of  Miss  Cavell  had  asked  him  to 
defend  her  before  the  German  Court,  that  he  agreed  to  do  so, 
but  that  owing  to  some  unforeseen  circumstances  he  was 
prevented  from  pleading  before  that  Court,  adding  that  he 
had  asked  Mr.  Kirschen,  a  member  of  the  Brussels  Bar  and 
his  friend,  to  take  up  the  case  and  plead  for  Miss  Cavell, 
and  that  Mr.  Kirschen  had  agreed  to  do  so. 

I,  therefore,  at  once  put  myself  in  communication  with 
Mr.  Kirschen,  who  told  me  that  Miss  Cavell  was  prosecuted 
for  having  helped  soldiers  to  cross  the  frontier.  I  asked 
him  whether  he  had  seen  Miss  Cavell  and  whether  she  had 
made  any  statement  to  him,  and  to  my  surprise  found  that 
the  lawyers  defending  prisoners  before  the  German  Military 
Court  were  not  allowed  to  see  their  clients  before  the  trial, 
and  were  not  shown  any  document  of  the  prosecution.  This, 
Mr.  Kirschen  said,  was  in  accordance  with  the  German  mili- 
tary rules.  He  added  that  the  hearing  of  the  trial  of  such 
cases  was  carried  out  very  carefully,  and  that  in  his  opinion, 
although  it  was  not  possible  to  see  the  client  before  the  trial, 
in  fact  the  trial  itself  developed  so  carefully  and  so  slowly, 
that  it  was  generally  possible  to  have  a  fair  knowledge  of 


EXECUTION  OF  EDITH  CAVELL  361 

all  the  facts  and  to  present  a  good  defense  for  the  pris- 
oner. This  would  specially  be  the  case  for  Miss  Cavell,  be- 
cause the  trial  would  be  rather  long  as  she  was  prosecuted 
with  thirty-four  other  prisoners. 

I  informed  Mr.  Kirschen  of  my  intention  to  be  present 
at  the  trial  so  as  to  watch  the  case.  He  immediately  dis- 
suaded me  from  taking  such  attitude,  which  he  said  would 
cause  a  great  prejudice  to  the  prisoner,  because  the  German 
judges  would  resent  it  and  feel  it  almost  as  an  affront  if  I 
was  appearing  to  exercise  a  kind  of  supervision  on  the  trial. 
He  thought  that  if  the  Germans  would  admit  my  presence, 
which  was  very  doubtful,  it  would  in  any  case  cause  preju- 
dice to  Miss  Cavell. 

Mr.  Kirschen  assured  me  over  and  over  again  that  the 
Military  Court  of  Brussels  was  always  perfectly  fair  and 
that  there  was  not  the  slightest  danger  of  any  miscarriage 
of  justice.  He  promised  that  he  would  keep  me  posted  on 
all  the  developments  which  the  case  would  take  and  would 
report  to  me  the  exact  charges  that  were  brought  against 
Miss  Cavell  and  the  facts  concerning  her  that  would  be  dis- 
closed at  the  trial,  so  as  to  allow  me  to  judge  by  myself  about 
the  merits  of  the  case.  He  insisted  that,  of  course,  he  would 
do  all  that  was  humanly  possible  to  defend  Miss  Cavell  to 
the  best  of  his  ability. 

Three  days  before  the  trial  took  place,  Mr.  Kirschen 
wrote  me  a  few  lines  saying  that  the  trial  would  be  on  the 
next  Thursday,  October  7th.  The  Legation  at  once  sent  him, 
on  October  5th,  a  letter  confirming  in  writing  in  the  name 
of  the  Legation  the  arrangement  that  had  been  made  be- 
tween him  and  me.  This  letter  was  delivered  to  Mr.  Kirschen 
by  a  messenger  of  the  Legation. 

The  trial  took  two  days,  ending  Friday,  the  8th. 

On  Saturday  I  was  informed  by  an  outsider  that  the  trial 
had  taken  place,  but  that  no  judgment  would  be  reached  till 
a  few  days  later. 

Receiving  no  report  from  Mr.  Kirschen,  I  tried  to  find 
him,  but  failed.  I  then  sent  him  a  note  on  Sunday,  asking 
him  to  send  his  report  to  the  Legation  or  call  there  on  Mon- 
day morning  at  8.30.     At  the  same  time  I  obtained  from 


362  EXECUTION  OF  EDITH  CAVELL 

some  other  person  present  at  the  trial  some  information 
about  what  had  occurred,  and  the  following  facts  were  dis- 
closed to  me : 

Miss  Cavell  was  prosecuted  for  having  helped  English 
and  French  soldiers,  as  well  as  Belgian  young  men,  to  cross 
the  frontier  and  to  go  over  to  England.  She  had  admitted 
by  signing  a  statement  before  the  day  of  the  trial,  and  by 
public  acknowledgment  in  Court,  in  the  presence  of  all  the 
other  prisoners  and  the  lawyers,  that  she  was  guilty  of  the 
charges  brought  against  her,  and  she  had  acknowledged  not 
only  that  she  had  helped  these  soldiers  to  cross  the  fron- 
tier, but  also  that  some  of  them  had  thanked  her  in  writing 
when  arriving  in  England.  This  last  admission  made  her 
case  so  much  the  more  serious,  because  if  it  only  had  been 
proved  against  her  that  she  had  helped  the  soldiers  to  tra- 
verse the  Dutch  frontier,  and  no  proof  was  produced  that 
these  soldiers  had  reached  a  country  at  war  with  Germany, 
she  could  only  have  been  sentenced  for  an  attempt  to  com- 
mit the  "crime"  and  not  for  the  "crime"  being  duly  accom- 
plished. As  the  case  stood,  the  sentence  fixed  by  the  Ger- 
man military  law  was  a  sentence  of  death. 

Paragraph  58  of  the  German  Military  Code  says : 

"Will  be  sentenced  to  death  for  treason  any  person  who, 
with  the  intention  of  helping  the  hostile  Power,  or  of  causing 
harm  to  the  German  or  allied  troops,  is  guilty  of  one  of  the 
crimes  of  paragraph  90  of  the  German  Penal  Code." 

The  case  referred  to  in  above  said  paragraph  90  consists 
in :     "Conducting  soldiers  to  the  enemy." 

The  penalties  above  set  forth  apply,  according  to  para- 
graph 160  of  the  German  Code,  in  case  of  war,  to  foreigners 
as  well  as  to  Germans. 

In  her  oral  statement  before  the  Court  Miss  Cavell  dis- 
closed almost  all  the  facts  of  the  whole  prosecution.  She 
was  questioned  in  German,  an  interpreter  translating  all 
the  questions  in  French,  with  which  language  Miss  Cavell 
was  well  acquainted.  She  spoke  without  trembling  and 
showed  a  clear  mind.  Often  she  added  some  greater  pre- 
cision to  her  previous  depositions. 

When  she  was  asked  why  she  helped  these  soldiers  to  go 


EXECUTION  OF  EDITH  CAVELL  363 

to  England,  she  replied  that  she  thought  that  if  she  had  not 
done  so  they  would  have  been  shot  by  the  Germans,  and 
that  therefore  she  thought  she  only  did  her  duty  to  her  coun- 
try in  saving  their  lives. 

The  Military  Public  Prosecutor  said  that  argument  might 
be  good  for  English  soldiers,  but  did  not  apply  to  Belgian 
young  men  whom  she  induced  to  cross  the  frontier  and  who 
would  have  been  perfectly  free  to  remain  in  the  country 
without  danger  to  their  lives. 

Mr.  Kirschen  made  a  very  good  plea  for  Miss  Cavell, 
using  all  arguments  that  could  be  brought  in  her  favor  be- 
fore the  Court. 

The  Military  Public  Prosecutor,  however,  asked  the 
Court  to  pass  a  death  sentence  on  Miss  Cavell  and  eight 
other  prisoners  amongst  the  thirty-five.  The  Court  did  not 
seem  to  agree,  and  the  judgment  was  postponed.  The  per- 
son informing  me  said  he  thought  that  the  Court  would  not 
go  to  the  extreme  limit. 

Anyhow,  after  I  had  found  out  these  facts  (viz.,  Sun- 
day evening),  I  called  at  the  Political  Division  of  the  Ger- 
man Government  in  Belgium  and  asked  whether,  now  that 
the  trial  had  taken  place,  permission  would  be  granted  to  me 
to  see  Miss  Cavell  in  jail,  as  surely  there  was  no  longer  any 
object  in  refusing  that  permission.  The  German  official, 
Mr.  Conrad,  said  he  would  make  the  necessary  inquiry  at  the 
Court  and  let  me  know  later  on. 

I  also  asked  him  that  permission  be  granted  to  Mr.  Ga- 
han,  the  English  clergyman,  to  see  Miss  Cavell. 

At  the  same  time  we  prepared  at  the  Legation,  to  be  ready 
for  every  eventuality,  a  petition  for  pardon,  addressed  to 
the  Governor-General  in  Belgium  and  a  transmitting  note 
addressed  to  Baron  von  der  Lancken. 

Monday  morning  at  11  I  called  up  Mr.  Conrad  on  the 
telephone  from  the  Legation  (as  I  already  had  done  previ- 
ously on  several  occasions  when  making  inquiries  about  the 
case),  asking  what  the  Military  Court  had  decided  about 
Mr.  Gahan  and  myself  seeing  Miss  Cavell.  He  replied  that 
Mr.  Gahan  could  not  see  her,  but  that  she  could  see  any  of 
the  three  Protestant  clergymen  attached  to  the  prison;  and 


364  EXECUTION  OF  EDITH  CAVELL 

that  I  could  not  see  her  till  the  judgment  was  pronounced 
and  signed,  but  that  this  would  probably  only  take  place  in 
a  day  or  two.  I  asked  the  German  official  to  inform  the 
Legation  immediately  after  the  passing  of  said  judgment, 
so  that  I  might  see  Miss  Cavell  at  once,  thinking,  of  course, 
that  the  Legation  might,  according  to  your  intentions,  take 
immediate  steps  for  Miss  Cavell's  pardon  if  the  judgment 
really  was  a  sentence  of  death. 

Very  surprised  to  receive  still  no  news  from  Mr. 
Kirschen,  I  then  called  at  his  house  at  12.30  and  was  in- 
formed that  he  would  not  be  there  till  about  the  end  of  the 
afternoon.  I  then  called,  at  12.40,  at  the  house  of  another 
lawyer  interested  in  the  case  of  a  fellow-prisoner,  and  found 
that  he  also  was  out.  In  the  afternoon,  however,  the  latter 
lawyer  called  at  my  house,  saying  that  in  the  morning  he 
had  heard  from  the  German  Kommandantur  that  judgment 
would  be  passed  only  the  next  morning,  viz.,  Tuesday  morn- 
ing. He  said  that  he  feared  that  the  Court  would  be  very 
severe  for  all  the  prisoners. 

Shortly  after,  this  lawyer  left  me,  and  while  I  was  pre- 
paring a  note  about  the  case,  at  8  p.  m.  I  was  privately  and 
reliably  informed  that  the  judgment  had  been  delivered  at 
5  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  that  Miss  Cavell  had  been  sen- 
tenced to  death,  and  that  she  would  be  shot  at  2  o'clock  the 
next  morning.  I  told  my  informer  that  I  was  extremely 
surprised  at  this,  because  the  Legation  had  received  no  in- 
formation yet,  neither  from  the  German  authorities  nor 
from  Mr.  Kirschen,  but  that  the  matter  was  too  serious  to 
run  the  smallest  chance,  and  that  therefore  I  would  proceed 
immediately  to  the  Legation  to  confer  with  your  Excellency 
and  take  all  possible  steps  to  save  Miss  Cavell's  life. 

According  to  your  Excellency's  decision,  Mr.  Gibson 
and  myself  went,  with  the  Spanish  Minister,  to  see  Baron  von 
der  Lancken,  and  the  report  of  our  interview  and  of  our 
efforts  to  save  Miss  Cavell  is  given  to  you  by  Mr.  Gibson. 

This  morning,  Mr.  Gahan,  the  English  clergyman,  called 
to  see  me  and  told  me  that  he  had  seen  Miss  Cavell  in  her 
cell  yesterday  night  at  10  o'clock,  that  he  had  given  her  the 
Holy  Communion  and  had  found  her  admirably  strong  and 


EXECUTION  OF  EDITH  CAVELL  365 

calm.  I  asked  Mr.  Gahan  whether  she  had  made  any  re- 
marks about  anything  concerning  the  legal  side  of  her  case, 
and  whether  the  confession  which  she  made  before  the  trial 
and  in  Court  was,  in  his  opinion,  perfectly  free  and  sincere. 
Mr.  Gahan  says  that  she  told  him  she  perfectly  well  knew 
what  she  had  done;  that  according  to  the  law,  of  course,  she 
was  guilty  and  had  admitted  her  guilt,  but  that  she  was 
happy  to  die  for  her  country. 

BY  BRAND  WHITLOCK 
Official  Letter  sent  Baron  von  der  Lancken,  also  to  Governor  von  Bissing 

Your  Excellency,  October  11,  191 5. 

I  have  just  heard  that  Miss  Cavell,  a  British  subject,  and 
consequently  under  the  protection  of  my  Legation,  was  this 
morning  condemned  to  death  by  court-martial. 

If  my  information  is  correct,  the  sentence  in  the  present 
case  is  more  severe  than  all  the  others  that  have  been  passed 
in  similar  cases  which  have  been  tried  by  the  same  court, 
and,  without  going  into  the  reasons  for  such  a  drastic  sen- 
tence, I  feel  that  I  have  the  right  to  appeal  to  his  Excellency 
the  Governor-General's  feelings  of  humanity  and  generosity 
in  Miss  Cavell's  favor,  and  to  ask  that  the  death  penalty 
passed  on  Miss  Cavell  may  be  commuted,  and  that  this  un- 
fortunate woman  shall  not  be  executed. 

Miss  Cavell  is  the  head  of  the  Brussels  Surgical  Institute. 
She  has  spent  her  life  in  alleviating  the  sufferings  of  others, 
and  her  school  has  turned  out  many  nurses  who  have  watched 
at  the  bedside  of  the  sick  all  the  world  over,  in  Germany 
as  in  Belgium.  At  the  beginning  of  the  war  Miss  Cavell  be- 
stowed her  care  as  freely  on  the  German  soldiers  as  on 
others.  Even  in  default  of  all  other  reasons,  her  career  as  a 
servant  of  humanity  is  such  as  to  inspire  the  greatest  sym- 
pathy and  to  call  for  pardon.  If  the  information  in  my 
possession  is  correct,  Miss  Cavell,  far  from  shielding  her- 
self, has,  with  commendable  straightforwardness,  admitted 
the  truth  of  all  the  charges  against  her,  and  it  is  the  very  in- 
formation which  she  herself  has  furnished,  and  which  she 
alone  was  in  a  position  to  furnish,  that  has  aggravated  the 
severity  of  the  sentence  passed  on  her. 


366  EXECUTION  OF  EDITH  CAVELL 

It  is  then  with  confidence,  and  in  the  hope  of  its  favor- 
able reception,  that  I  beg  your  Excellency  to  submit  to  the 
Governor-General  my  request  for  pardon  on  Miss  Cavell's 
behalf. 

BY   HUGH    GIBSON 
Report  to  Mr.  Whitlock  by  the  Secretary  of  the  U.  S.  Legation 

—        American  Legation,  Brussels,  October  12,  1915. 

Upon  learning  early  yesterday  morning  through  unoffi- 
cial sources  that  the  trial  of  Miss  Edith  Cavell  had  been  fin- 
ished on  Saturday  afternoon,  and  that  the  prosecuting  at- 
torney {"Kriegsgerichtsrat")  had  asked  for  a  sentence  of 
death  against  her,  telephonic  inquiry  was  immediately  made 
at  the  Politische  Abteilung  as  to  the  facts.  It  was  stated  that 
no  sentence  had  as  yet  been  pronounced  and  that  there  would 
probably  be  delay  of  a  day  or  two  before  a  decision  was 
reached.  Mr.  Conrad  gave  positive  assurances  that  the  Le- 
gation would  be  fully  informed  as  to  developments  in  this 
case.  Despite  these  assurances,  we  made  repeated  inquiries 
in  the  course  of  the  day,  the  last  one  being  at  6.20  p.  m. 
Belgian  time.  Mr.  Conrad  then  stated  that  sentence  had  not 
yet  been  pronounced,  and  specifically  renewed  his  previous 
assurances  that  he  would  not  fail  to  inform  us  as  soon  as 
there  was  any  news. 

At  8.30  it  was  learned  from  an  outside  source  that  sen- 
tence had  been  passed  in  the  course  of  the  afternoon  (before 
the  last  conversation  with  Mr.  Conrad),  and  that  the  exe- 
cution would  take  place  during  the  night.  In  conformity 
with  your  instructions,  I  went  (accompanied  by  Mr.  de 
Leval)  to  look  for  the  Spanish  Minister  and  found  him 
dining  at  the  home  of  Baron  Lambert.  I  explained  the  cir- 
cumstances to  his  Excellency  and  asked  that  (as  you  were 
ill  and  unable  to  go  yourself)  he  go  with  us  to  see  Baron 
von  der  Lancken  and  support  as  strongly  as  possible  the  pier, 
which  I  was  to  make  in  your  name,  that  execution  of  the 
death  penalty  should  be  deferred  until  the  Governor  could 
consider  your  appeal  for  clemency. 

We  took  with  us  a  note  addressed  to  Baron  von  der 
Lancken,  and  a  plea  for  clemency  ("rcquete  en  grace")  ad- 


EXECUTION  OF  EDITH  CAVELL  367 

dressed  to  the  Governor-General.  The  Spanish  Minister 
willingly  agreed  to  accompany  us,  and  we  went  together  to 
the  Politische  Abteilung. 

Baron  von  der  Lancken  and  all  the  members  of  his  staff 
were  absent  for  the  evening.     We  sent  a  messenger  to  ask 
that  he  return  at  once  to  see  us  in  regard  to  a  matter  of  ut- 
most urgency.     A  little  after   10  o'clock  he  arrived,   fol- 
lowed shortly  after  by  Count  Harrach  and  Herr  von  Falken- 
hausen,  members  of  his  staff.     The  circumstances  of  the 
case  were  explained  to  him  and  your  note  presented,  and  he 
read  it  aloud  in  our  presence.     He  expressed  disbelief  in 
the  report  that  sentence  had  actually  been  passed,  and  mani- 
fested some  surprise  that  we  should  give  credence  to  any 
report  not  emanating  from  official  sources.     He  was  quite 
insistent  on  knowing  the  exact  source  of  our  information,  but 
this  I  did  not  feel  at  liberty  to  communicate  to  him.    Baron 
von  der  Lancken  stated  that  it  was  quite  improbable  that 
sentence  had  been  pronounced,  that  even  if  so,  it  would  not 
be  executed  within  so  short  a  time,  and  that  in  any  event  it 
would  be  quite  impossible  to  take  any  action  before  morning. 
It  was,  of  course,  pointed  out  to  him  that  if  the  facts  were 
as  we  believed  them  to  be,  action  would  be  useless  unless 
taken  at  once.    We  urged  him  to  ascertain  the  facts  imme- 
diately, and  this,  after  some  hesitancy,  he  agreed  to  do.    He 
telephoned  to  the  presiding  judge  of  the  court-martial  and 
returned  in  a  short  time  to  say  that  the  facts  were  as  we 
had  represented  them,  and  that  it  was  intended  to  carry  out 
the  sentence  before  morning.  We  then  presented,  as  earnestly 
as  possible,  your  plea  for  delay.     So  far  as  I  am  able  to 
judge,  we  neglected  to  present  no  phase  of  the  matter  which 
might  have  had  any  effect,  emphasizing  the  horror  of  exe- 
cuting a  woman,  no  matter  what  her  offense,  pointing  out 
that  the  death  sentence  had  heretofore  been  imposed  only 
for  actual  cases  of  espionage,  and  that  Miss  Cavell  was  not 
even  accused  by  the  German  authorities  of  anything  so  seri- 
ous.   I  further  called  attention  to  the  failure  to  comply  with 
Mr.  Conrad's  promise  to  inform  the  Legation  of  the  sen- 
tence.   I  urged  that  inasmuch  as  the  offenses  charged  against 
Miss  Cavell  were  long  since  accomplished,  and  that  as  she 


368  EXECUTION  OF  EDITH  CAVELL 

had  been  for  some  weeks  in  prison,  a  delay  in  carrying  out  the 
sentence  could  entail  no  danger  to  the  German  cause.  I 
even  went  so  far  as  to  point  out  the  fearful  effect  of  a  sum- 
mary execution  of  this  sort  upon  public  opinion,  both  here 
and  abroad,  and,  although  I  had  no  authority  for  doing  so, 
called  attention  to  the  possibility  that  it  might  bring  about 
reprisals. 

The  Spanish  Minister  forcibly  supported  all  our  repre- 
sentations and  made  an  earnest  plea  for  clemency. 

Baron  von  der  Lancken  stated  that  the  Military  Gov- 
ernor was  the  supreme  authority  ("Gerichtsherr")  in  mat- 
ters of  this  sort ;  that  appeal  from  his  decision  could  be  car- 
ried only  to  the  Emperor,  the  Governor-General  having  no 
authority  to  intervene  in  such  cases.  He  added  that  under 
the  provisions  of  German  martial  law  the  Military  Governor 
had  discretionary  power  to  accept  or  to  refuse  acceptance 
of  an  appeal  for  clemency.  After  some  discussion  he  agreed 
to  call  the  Military  Governor  on  to  the  telephone  and  learn 
whether  he  had  already  ratified  the  sentence,  and  whether 
there  was  any  chance  for  clemency.  He  returned  in  about 
half  an  hour,  and  stated  that  he  had  been  to  confer  personally 
with  the  Military  Governor,  who  said  that  he  had  acted  in 
the  case  of  Miss  Cavell  only  after  mature  deliberation ;  that 
the  circumstances  in  her  case  were  of  such  a  character  that 
he  considered  the  infliction  of  the  death  penalty  imperative; 
and  that  in  view  of  the*  circumstances  of  this  case  he  must 
decline  to  accept  your  plea  for  clemency,  or  any  representa- 
tion in  regard  to  the  matter. 

BY  H.   STIRLING  GAHAN 
Statement  by  Rev.  Mr.  Gahan,  a  British  Chaplain  in  Brussels 

On  Monday  evening,  October  nth,  I  was  admitted  by 
special  passport  from  the  German  authorities  to  the  prison 
of  St.  Gilles,  where  Miss  Edith  Cavell  had  been  confined 
for  ten  weeks.  The  final  sentence  had  been  given  early  that 
afternoon. 

To  my  astonishment  and  relief  I  found  my  friend  per- 
fectly calm  and  resigned.     But  this  could  not  lessen  the  ten- 


EXECUTION  OF  EDITH  CAVELL  369 

derness  and  intensity  of  feeling  on  either  part  during  that 
last  interview  of  almost  an  hour. 

Her  first  words  to  me  were  upon  a  matter  concerning 
herself  personally,  but  the  solemn  asseveration  which  ac- 
companied them  was  made  expressedly  in  the  light  of  God 
and  eternity.  She  then  added  that  she  wished  all  her  friends 
to  know  that  she  willingly  gave  her  life  for  her  country, 
and  said:  "I  have  no  fear  nor  shrinking;  I  have  seen  death 
so  often  that  it  is  not  strange  or  fearful  to  me."  She  further 
said  :  "I  thank  God  for  this  ten  weeks'  quiet  before  the  end." 
"Life  has  always  been  hurried  and  full  of  difficulty."  "This 
time  of  rest  has  been  a  great  mercy."  "They  have  all 
been  very  kind  to  me  here.  But  this  I  would  say,  standing 
as  I  do  in  view  of  God  and  eternity,  I  realize  that  patriotism 
is  not  enough.  I  must  have  no  hatred  or  bitterness  towards 
any  one." 

We  partook  of  the  Holy  Communion  together,  and  she 
received  the  Gospel  message  of  consolation  with  all  her  heart. 
At  the  close  of  the  little  service  I  began  to  repeat  the  words, 
"Abide  with  me,"  and  she  joined  softly  in  the  end. 

We  sat  quietly  talking  until  it  was  time  for  me  to  go. 
She  gave  me  parting  messages  for  relations  and  friends. 
She  spoke  of  her  soul's  needs  at  the  moment  and  she  re- 
ceived the  assurance  of  God's  Word  as  only  the  Christian 
can  do. 

Then  I  said  "Good-by,"  and  she  smiled  and  said,  "We 
shall  meet  again." 

The  German  military  chaplain  was  with  her  at  the  end 
and  afterwards  gave  her  Christian  burial. 

He  told  me :  "She  was  brave  and  bright  to  the  last.  She 
professed  her  Christian  faith  and  that  she  was  glad  to  die 
for  her  country."    "She  died  like  a  heroine." 

BY  DR.   ALFRED   ZIMMERMANN 

An  Open  Interview  Given  to  the  Foreign  Press  by  the  German  Under- 
Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs 

It  was  a  pity  that  Miss  Cavell  had  to  be  executed,  but 
it  was  necessary.  She  was  judged  justly.  We  hope  it  will 
not  be  necessary  to  have  any  more  executions. 

W.,  VOL.  III.— 24. 


3/0 


EXECUTION  OF  EDITH  CAVELL 


I  see  from  the  English  and  American  press  that  the  shoot- 
ins:  of  an  Englishwoman  and  the  condemnation  of  several 
other  women  in  Brussels  for  treason  has  caused  a  sensation, 
and  capital  against  us  is  being  made  out  of  the  fact.  It  is 
undoubtedly  a  terrible  thing  that  the  woman  has  been  ex- 
ecuted ;  but  consider  what  would  happen  to  a  State,  particu- 
larly in  war,  if  it  left  crimes  aimed  at  the  safety  of  its  armies 
to  go  unpunished  because  committed  by  women.  No  criminal 
code  in  the  world — least  of  all  the  laws  of  war — makes  such 
a  distinction;  and  the  feminine  sex  has  but  one  preference, 
according  to  legal  usages,  namely,  that  women  in  a  delicate 
condition  may  not  be  executed.  Otherwise  man  and  woman 
are  equal  before  the  law,  and  only  the  degree  of  guilt  makes 
a  difference  in  the  sentence  for  the  crime  and  its  conse- 
quences. 

I  have  before  me  the  court's  verdict  in  the  Cavell  case, 
and  can  assure  you  that  it  was  gone  into  with  the  utmost 
thoroughness,  and  was  investigated  and  cleared  up  to  the 
smallest  details.  The  result  was  so  convincing,  and  the  cir- 
cumstances were  so  clear,  that  no  war  court  in  the  world 
could  have  given  any  other  verdict,  for  it  was  not  concerned 
with  a  single  emotional  deed  of  one  person,  but  a  well- 
thought-out  plot,  with  many  far-reaching  ramifications, 
which  for  nine  months  succeeded  in  doing  valuable  service  to 
our  enemies  to  the  great  detriment  of  our  armies.  Countless 
Belgian,  French,  and  English  soldiers  are  again  fighting 
in  the  ranks  of  the  Allies  who  owe  their  escape  to  the  activi- 
ties of  the  band  now  found  guilty,  whose  head  was  the  Cavell 
woman.  Only  the  utmost  sternness  could  ck  away  with 
such  activities  under  the  very  nose  of  our  authorities,  and 
a  Government  which  in  such  case  does  not  resort  to  the  stern- 
est measures  sins  against  its  most  elementary  duties  toward 
the  safety  of  its  own  army. 

All  those  convicted  were  thoroughly  aware  of  the  nature 
of  their  acts.  The  court  particularly  weighed  this  point 
with  care,  letting  off  several  of  the  accused  because  they 
were  in  doubt  as  to  whether  they  knew  that  their  actions 
were  punishable.  Those  condemned  knew  what  they  were 
doing,  for  numerous  public  proclamations  had  pointed  out 


EXECUTION  OF  EDITH  CAVELL  371 

the  fact  that  aiding  enemies'  armies  was  punishable  with 
death. 

I  know  that  the  motives  of  the  condemned  were  not 
base;  that  they  acted  from  patriotism;  but  in  war  one  must 
be  prepared  to  seal  one's  patriotism  with  blood  whether  one 
faces  the  enemy  in  battle  or  otherwise  in  the  interest  of  one's 
cause  does  deeds  which  justly  bring  after  them  the  death 
penalty.  Among  our  Russian  prisoners  are  several  young 
girls  who  fought  against  us  in  soldiers'  uniforms.  Had  one 
of  these  girls  fallen  no  one  would  have  accused  us  of  bar- 
barity against  women.  Why,  now,  when  another  woman 
has  met  the  death  to  which  she  knowingly  exposed  herself, 
as  did  her  comrades  in  battle? 

There  are  moments  in  the  life  of  nations  where  con- 
sideration for  the  existence  of  the  individual  is  a  crime 
against  all.  Such  a  moment  was  here.  It  was  necessary 
once  for  all  to  put  an  end  to  the  activity  of  our  enemies,  re- 
gardless of  their  motives;  therefore  the  death  penalty  was 
executed  so  as  to  frighten  off  all  those  who,  counting  on 
preferential  treatment  for  their  sex,  take  part  in  undertak- 
ings punishable  by  death.  Were  special  consideration  shown 
to  women  we  should  open  the  door  wide  to  such  activities 
on  the  part  of  women,  who  are  often  more  clever  in  such 
matters  than  the  cleverest  male  spy.  The  man  who  is  in  a 
position  of  responsibility  must  do  that,  but,  unconcerned 
about  the  world's  judgment,  he  must  often  follow  the  diffi- 
cult path  of  duty. 

If,  despite  these  considerations,  it  is  now  being  discussed 
whether  mercy  shall  be  shown  the  rest  of  those  convicted, 
and  if  the  life  which  they  have  forfeited  under  recognized 
law  is  given  back  to  them,  you  can  deduce  from  that  how 
earnestly  we  are  striving  to  bring  our  feelings  of  humanity 
in  accord  with  the  commandments  of  stern  duty.  If  the 
others  are  pardoned  it  will  be  at  the  expense  of  the  security 
of  our  armies,  for  it  is  to  be  feared  that  new  attempts  will 
be  made  to  harm  us  when  it  is  believed  that  offenders  will 
go  unpunished  or  suffer  only  a  mild  penalty.  Only  pity  for 
the  guilty  can  lead  to  such  pardons;  they  will  not  be  an  ad- 
mission that  the  suspended  sentence  was  too  stern. 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE  ESTABLISHED 

A  GERMAN  RAILROAD  RUNS  FROM  BERLIN  TO  CONSTAN- 
TINOPLE 


NOVEMBER   5TH 

HARRY  PRATT  JUDSON  R.  W.  SETON-WATSON 

MANIFESTO  OF  THE  GERMAN  "INTELLECTUALS" 

DR.  LUDWIG  STEIN 

Even  the  most  extravagant  of  Germany's  dreams  seemed  for  the 
moment  to  have  come  true  with  the  Bulgarian  alliance  and  the  con- 
sequent crushing  of  Serbia.  Austro-Hungary  had  been  humbled  into 
complete  obedience.  Turkey,  under  Enver  Pasha,  was  a  German  tool. 
The  Bulgarian  rulers,  despised  and  hated  by  the  rest  of  the  world 
for  their  sudden,  treacherous,  and  utterly  unprovoked  attack  on 
Serbia,  had  no  chance  of  continued  power  except  under  German  pro- 
tection. Thus  the  long  dreamed-of  Empire  of  Middle  Europe  became 
suddenly,  triumphantly,  blindingly,  an  accomplished  fact. 

Dr.  Judson,  President  of  the  University  of  Chicago,  here  points  out 
the  American  realization  of  this  fact.  Dr.  Seton- Watson  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  London  discusses  its  meaning  for  Europe.  And  then  we 
present  the  remarkable  "Manifesto"  which  is  the  highest  authority 
for  establishing  the  German  outlook  of  1915.  This  "Manifesto  of  the 
Intellectuals"  was  a  statement  so  widely  signed  by  German  leaders 
of  thought  and  action  as  to  represent  the  practically  universal  public 
opinion  of  the  Empire  at  the  time.  It  is  an  astonishing  revelation 
of  what  Germans  meant  to  make  the  Allies  pay  for  peace,  of  how 
completely  the  Germany  of  1915  believe^  that  she  had  won  the  War, 
and  that  she  "held  the  world  in  thrall."  Among  other  points,  it  is 
worth  noting  that  the  Intellectuals  had  no  slightest  intention  of  keep- 
ing their  country's  pledge  to  restore  Belgium's  freedom. 

Of  the  coming  of  this  new  empire,  Germans  had  a  metaphor  and 
a  symbol.  They  wanted  and  spoke  of  a  wholly  German  railroad  to 
run  without  frontier  barriers  or  change  of  cars  "From  Berlin  to  Bag- 
dad." The  first  great  step  of  this  was  now,  immediately  that  the  Ser- 
bian victories  permitted,  on  November  5th,  put  into  practice.  A 
through  German  train  was  run  from  Berlin  to  Constantinople.  Dr. 
Stein,  a  passenger  on  that  historic  train,  describes  for  us  its  triumphant 
progress. 

The  full  realization  of  the  German  dream,  the  further  passage  of 
that  German  train  across  Asiatic  Turkey  from  Constantinople  to 
Bagdad  was  never  realized.  In  theory  it  might  have  been  accom- 
plished ;  official  Turkey  had  no  chance  of  opposition ;  but  practically 
the  chaotic  condition  of  western  Asia,  the  utter  breakdown  of  all  or- 
ganization throughout  the  Turkish  Empire  made  the  journey  impos- 

372 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE  373 

sible.    The  Prussianized  empire  of  Middle  Europe  could  not  yet  spare 
officials  to  Prussianize  middle  Asia. 

In  Europe,  however,  the  German  enthusiasts  extended  their  dreams. 
One  writer  immediately  proposed  that  the  through  train  should  run 
from  Antwerp  to  Constantinople,  that  is,  that  Belgium  should  be 
treated  as  a  permanent  part  of  the  empire.  Another  writer  at  once 
outmatched  this  with  a  further  cry,  which  was  widely  taken  up, 
"From  Lille  to  Constantinople."  Lille  was  the  chief  French  city  held 
by  the  Germans,  so  that  the  new  demand  was  for  northern  France  as 
well  as  Belgium. 

C.   F.   H. 

BY    HARRY    PRATT    JUDSON  * 

THE  aims  of  the  Pan-German  policy  are  based  on  the 
control  of  a  great  Central-European  dominion  by  Ger- 
many itself.  This  Central-European  dominion  comprises  in 
the  first  place  the  Germanization  of  Austria-Hungary,  first 
by  a  customs  union  and  then  by  such  close  bonds  as  in  the 
case  of  the  North-German  Zollverein,  forming  an  interme- 
diate step  to  actual  Prussian  political  domination. 

The  Austro-Hungarian  monarchy  is  a  curious  aggre- 
gation of  territories  and  races  united  under  the  Hapsburg 
emperor.  The  history  of  this  empire  in  the  main  consists 
of  the  gradual  accession  of  the  House  of  Hapsburg  to  the 
sovereignty  over  one  after  the  other  of  the  various  elements, 
as  duke,  count,  king,  or  what  not.  The  union,  therefore,  is 
essentially  personal  in  the  emperor.  The  title  of  the  em- 
peror of  Austria  as  such  dates  only  from  1806,  when  the 
medieval  Roman  Empire  was  dissolved,  and  the  head  of 
the  House  of  Hapsburg  assumed  the  new  title  of  "Em- 
peror of  Austria."  Since  1867  the  monarchy  has  been  dual 
in  character,  and  the  head  of  the  House  of  Hapsburg  reigns 
as  emperor  of  Austria  and  king  of  Hungary.  Each  of  these 
two  portions  of  the  joint  monarchy  has  its  own  parlia- 
ment and  its  own  ministry,  and  there  is  a  common  ministry 
for  war,  finance,  and  foreign  affairs.  The  democratic  basis 
of  the  two  parliaments  is  not  substantial,  and  the  emperor 
and  king  is  able  to  rule  without  parliament  or  in  spite  of 
parliament  whenever  it  seems  best. 

The  race  elements  in  the  Dual  Monarchy  are  numerous. 

1  Published  in  1917,  and  reprinted  by  permission  from  the  University 
of  Chicago  Press. 


374  THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE 

In  Austria  there  is  a  total  population  of  approximately 
28  millions;  10  millions  of  these  are  Germans,  the  remain- 
ing 18  millions  being  Slavs  and  Italians.  In  Hungary  the 
population  is  approximately  20  millions.  Perhaps  10  mil- 
lions are  Magyars,  2  millions  Germans,  and  8  millions  Slavs 
and  Latins.  And  further,  in  the  Dual  Monarchy  the  im- 
perial provinces  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  have  a  popu- 
lation of  almost  2  millions,  nearly  all  Serbian-Slavs. 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  both  in  Austria  and  in  Hungary 
the  ruling  class  is  a  minority  which  imposes  its  will  on  the 
majority  by  force  and  by  legal  subtleties.2  Of  the  total  popu- 
lation in  the  Dual  Monarchy  of  about  50  millions  there 
are  approximately  12  millions  of  Germans  and  10  millions 
of  Magyars,  or  22  millions  of  the  ruling  classes.  The  re- 
maining 28  millions  include  Slavs  and  Latins.  The  Slavs 
comprise  the  Czecho-Slovaks  in  Bohemia,  Moravia,  and 
eastern  Silesia,  the  Poles  in  central  and  western  Galicia,  and 
the  South-Slavs,  including  Croats,  Serbs,  and  Slovenes. 
The  Latins  include  Italians  in  the  South  Tyrol  and  in  Trieste 
and  vicinity  and  Rumanians  in  Transylvania  and  Bukowina. 
The  Czechs,  or  Bohemians,  are  a  highly  cultivated  peo- 
ple, with  a  history  rich  in  literature,  the  arts,  and  free  gov- 
ernment. The  freedom  of  the  Bohemian  kingdom  histori- 
cally is  as  old  as  that  of  Hungary,  and  the  desire  of  the 
Czechs  has  long  been  that  the  emperor  of  Austria  should 
be  crowned  as  "King  of  Bohemia,"  the  ancient  kingdom 
thus  forming  a  third  element  in  the  monarchy,  on  a  par  with 
f\ustria  and  Hungary  The  Galician  Poles  are  a  fragment 
of  the  ancient  Polish  kingdom,  and  represent  a  part  of  the 
plunder  of  that  kingdom  taken  by  the  House  of  Hapsburg 
late  in  the  eighteenth  century.  The  Rumanians  and  the 
South-Slavs  are  a  remnant  forced  across  the  Austrian  line 
from  the  old  independent  Serbian  and  Rumanian  kingdoms, 

'The  Austrian  parliament  is  cunningly  juggled  in  the  membership  of 
its  lower  house.  At  the  sitting  in  May,  1917 — the  first  meeting  since 
the  war  broke  out — a  rabid  Pan-German  was  elected  to  the  presidency 
by  a  vote  of  215  to  195 — 215  Germans  to  195  non-Germans  in  a  nation 
in  which  Germans  are  in  a  minority  by  a  ratio  of  10  to  18.  The 
election  law  puts  about  an  average  of  42,889  Germans  in  a  parlia- 
mentary district,  while  it  takes  about  65,479  Slavs  to  elect  one  deputy. 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE  375 

which  were  destroyed  by  the  Turks  in  the  late  Middle  Ages. 

The  next  element  in  this  Central-European  dominion  to 
be  controlled  by  Germany  lies  in  the  Balkan  Peninsula.  It 
is  quite  essential  that  through  Austria-Hungary  Germany 
should  be  dominant  from  Austria  to  the  ^Egean  Sea.  This 
involves  control  of  Serbia  and  such  alliances  with  the  other 
Balkan  states  as  might  easily  be  effected  through  the  Ger- 
man princelings  on  their  thrones,  or  by  German  intermar- 
riage, as  in  the  case  of  Greece. 

The  next  step  involves  the  Germanization  of  Turkey.  In 
the  guise  of  an  alliance  there  would  be  a  real  political  and 
economic  control  of  that  empire,  which  might  then  be  ex- 
ploited by  German  capital.  Thus  Germany,  if  this  plan 
for  a  Central-European  state  should  be  carried  out,  would 
be  dominant  from  the  Baltic  Sea  to  the  Persian  Gulf. 

Central  Europe  as  thus  organized  is  the  essential  basis  of 
the  Pan-German  plan  for  the  domination  of  the  rest  of 
Europe.  It  was  believed  by  the  Pan-Germanists  that  it 
would  be  easy  for  Germany  to  crush  Russia,  annex  Poland 
and  the  Baltic  provinces,  and  very  likely  the  large  wheat 
section  of  the  southeast,  thus  greatly  extending  German 
economic  influence  and  putting  an  end  for  all  time  to  the 
power  of  Russia  in  Europe.  Again,  in  the  west,  if  there 
should  be  objection  to  the  German  domination  in  Central 
Europe,  Germany  could  easily  crush  France,  annex  the  valu- 
able mining  and  industrial  region  of  the  north,  annex  the 
Channel  ports,  seize  Belgium,  and  ultimately  intimidate 
Holland  into  absorption  in  the  German  Empire.  This  would 
secure  for  Germany  the  valuable  ports  of  the  North  Sea, 
which  could  be  made  the  base  of  her  future  naval  supremacy, 
and  at  the  same  time  would  annex  to  the  German  Empire 
the  large  colonies  of  Holland  and  of  Belgium,  great  areas 
in  Africa  and  Asia  and  the  Asiatic  islands  which  Germany 
has  long  coveted.  It  is  obvious  that  if  this  plan  is  carried 
out  the  next  step  will  be  the  destruction  of  the  British  Em- 
pire. A  base  of  operations  in  the  Channel  ports  would 
make  it  not  very  difficult  a  few  years  later  to  throw  a  great 
army  into  the  Island,  and  either  seize  it  outright  or  reduce 
it  to  impotence  by  the  exaction  of  an  enormous  indemnity. 


376  THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE 

Meanwhile,  subsequent  plans  for  the  overthrow  of  the 
British  Empire  in  India  and  for  dominance  on  the  China 
coast  are  all  carefully  worked  out  and  on  record.  The  seiz- 
ure of  Egypt  would  readily  follow  the  control  of  Turkey, 
and  thus  in  the  long  run  Africa  would  become  German  al- 
most as  a  whole.  The  maps  found  by  the  Boer  conquerors  of 
German  Southwest  Africa  indicated  Africa  as  German  from 
the  northern  boundaries  of  the  Belgian  Congo  colonies  clear 
to  the  Cape,  leaving  only  the  little  Boer  republic  as  a  Ger- 
man suzerainty. 

The  plans  for  Pan-German  domination  in  the  Americas 
are  just  as  well  known  and  just  as  obvious  in  their  intent. 
The  German  colony  in  southern  Brazil  was  expected  to  be 
a  base,  if  need  be,  of  military  operations,  and  through  naval 
and  military  force  and  through  alliances  it  was  believed  that 
by  the  middle  of  the  twentieth  century  at  the  latest  Germany 
would  control  practically  all  the  valuable  parts  of  South 
America.  The  result  as  to  the  Panama  Canal  and  Central 
America  needs  no  comment,  and  the  Zimmermann  note 
makes  very  plain  the  intent  of  Germany,  hoping  to  combine 
with  Mexico  and  Japan  to  dismember  the  United  States,  and 
to  extort  from  it  so  enormous  an  indemnity  as  to  make  it 
simply  a  vassal  state  of  the  world-wide  German  Empire. 

These  are  not  the  dreams  of  visionaries.  They  are  actual 
plans,  worked  out  in  great  detail,  on  record,  and  proved  be- 
yond the  possibility  of  doubt  as  the  ultimate  aims  of  the 
controlling  forces  in  Germany. 

BY  R.    W.   SETON   WATSON 

The  victorious  Balkan  campaign  conducted  by  the  Cen- 
tral Powers,  aided  by  treacherous  Bulgaria,  revealed,  as 
by  a  flash  of  lightning,  the  vast  designs  which  underlie 
Germany's  military  operations.  Serbia  is  the  gate  of  the 
East,  and  its  warders  had  to  be  dispossessed,  if  Germany 
was  to  assure  her  command  of  Constantinople  and  the  de- 
caying Turkish  heritage.  There  are  three  stages  in  the  Pan- 
German  plan — first,  the  creation  of  "Mitteleuropa,"  a  great 
central  European  state-organism  of  130-150,000,000  inhabi- 
tants, as  an  economic  and  military  unit;  second,  the  realiza- 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE  377 

tion  of  the  dream  of  "Berlin-Bagdad,"  by  the  inclusion 
within  the  political  and  economic  sphere  of  influence  of  the 
new  Zollverein  of  all  the  territory  lying  between  the  Hun- 
garian frontier  and  the  Persian  Gulf;  and  third,  the  achieve- 
ment of  naval  supremacy  and  world-power.  There  can  be 
no  half  measures  in  such  a  struggle :  the  answer  must  be 
"Yes"  or  "No."  It  ought  to  be  obvious  that  there  is  an  es- 
sential unity  of  outlook  among  our  four  chief  adversaries. 
Prussia,  Hungary,  Turkey,  and  Bulgaria — each  stands  for 
racial  domination  in  varying  degrees  of  crudeness.  The  pol- 
icy of  Germanization  in  Posen,  and  Magyarization  among 
the  unhappy  Slovaks  and  Rumanians,  the  Young  Turkish 
policy  of  repression  and  extermination  in  Armenia,  and  the 
dream  of  Bulgarian  hegemony  in  the  Balkans  on  the  most 
approved  Prussian  lines — all  are  based  upon  the  same  prin- 
ciple of  brute  force  as  the  determining  factor  in  human 
progress,  and  all  stand  or  fall  together.  Even  in  defeat  Ger- 
many will  remain  a  great  nation,  and  will,  it  is  to  be  hoped, 
once  more  devote  herself  to  the  pursuit  of  that  true  "cul- 
ture" which  her  rulers  have  so  hideously  parodied  in  this 
war.  But  for  Hungary  and  Turkey  defeat  means  the  end 
of  evil  ambitions  which  have  too  long  plagued  the  civilized 
world.  Magyars  and  Turks  may  continue  to  exist  side  by 
side  with  the  races  whom  they  have  so  long  held  in  thrall,  but 
the  liberation  of  the  latter  will  render  Magyar  and  Ottoman 
Imperialism  impossible,  set  free  the  pent-up  energies  of  the 
Slavonic  world  and  give  a  new  direction  to  European  prog- 
ress. Such  an  event  can  only  be  welcome  to  the  Western 
Powers,  whose  vital  interests  demand  the  erection  of  a  bar- 
rier to  the  Drang  nach  Osten,  and  who  can  only  hope  to  build 
with  the  material  which  is  already  to  hand.  This  material 
consists  of  the  Slav  and  Latin  peoples  of  Austria-Hungary 
and  Southeastern  Europe  generally,  who  are  eager  to  lead 
their  own  national  lives,  and  to  free  themselves  from  the  ex- 
ploitation, military,  political,  and  economic,  of  their  alien 
rulers.  In  one  of  its  main  aspects  this  war  is  the  decisive 
struggle  of  Slav  and  German,  and  upon  it  depends  the  final 
settlement  of  the  Balkan  and  Austrian  problems.  On  the 
manner  of  this  settlement  and  on  its  completeness  depends  in 


3/8 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE 


turn  the  question  whether  this  war  is  to  be  followed  by  stable 
peace  in  Europe,  or  by  the  creation  of  an  armed  camp.  The 
essential  preliminaries,  then,  are  the  expulsion  of  the  Turks 
from  Europe,  and  the  disruption  of  the  Hapsburg  Monarchy 
into  its  component  parts.  On  its  ruins  new  and  vigorous  na- 
tional states  will  rise.  The  great  historic  memories  of  the 
past  will  be  adapted  to  modern  economic  necessities.  Po- 
land, Bohemia,  and  Serbia  will  be  restored  to  the  common- 
wealth of  nations,  and  in  their  new  form  will  constitute  a 
chain  of  firm  obstacles  on  the  path  of  German  aggression. 
Poland,  freed  from  her  long  bondage,  and  reunited  as  a  State 
of  over  twenty  million  inhabitants,  on  terms  of  close  inti- 
macy with  Russia,  will  be  able  to  develop  still  further  her 
great  natural  riches,  and  to  reconstruct  her  social  system 
on  the  lines  of  Western  democracy.  Of  Bohemia  it  can  fairly 
be  said  that  no  Slav  race  is  so  thoroughly  modern,  so  keenly 
national  in  feeling,  so  well  educated  and  well  organized, 
so  ready  for  endurance  and  sacrifice.  Bohemia  has  been  in 
the  forefront  of  the  battle  against  Germanism,  from  the  days 
when  John  Huss  ejected  the  Germans  from  Prague  Uni- 
versity and  the  Hussites  held  all  Europe  at  bay,  till  the  mod- 
ern epoch  when  the  great  Czech  scientists  and  poets  laid  the 
foundations  of  intellectual  Pan-Slavism,  and  when  the  lower 
and  middle  classes  contested  inch  by  inch  every  village, 
every  house,  every  school,  every  child,  against  the  Germans 
with  their  infinitely  superior  resources  and  backing.  Bo- 
hemia is  one  of  the  most  valuable  assets  in  the  struggle 
against  Pan-Germanism,  and  cannot  be  ignored  by  any  one 
who  has  the  cause  of  the  Allies  at  heart.  Finally,  the  small 
and  land-locked  Serbia  of  the  past  will  be  transformed  into 
a  strong  and  united  Southern  Slav  State  upon  the  eastern 
shore  of  the  Adriatic.  The  depth  of  the  movement  for  na- 
tional unity  among  all  the  Serbs,  Croats,  and  Slovenes  of  the 
Dual  Monarchy,  and  the  intensity  of  their  opposition  to 
Magyar  misrule  in  Croatia,  had  even  before  the  war  made 
it  abundantly  clear  that  a  radical  solution  of  the  Southern 
Slav  problem  is  a  sine  qua  non  for  the  peace  of  Southeastern 
Europe.  The  geographical  situation  of  the  new  state  assigns 
to  it  a  role  of  peculiar  importance  in  the  struggle  against 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE  379 

the  Pan-German  program,  the  more  so  as  it  supplies  the 
possibility  of  establishing  a  new  and  much  shorter  non-Ger- 
man land  route  to  the  East,  via  North  Italy,  Laibach,  Agram, 
Belgrade. 

As  a  second  line  behind  these  three  Slavonic  States  we 
should  aim  at  creating  Independent  Hungary,  stripped  of  its 
oppressed  nationalities,  and  reduced  to  its  true  Magyar  ker- 
nel, but  for  that  very  reason  emancipated  from  the  corrupt 
oligarchy  which  has  hitherto  controlled  its  destinies,  and  thus 
at  last  enabled  to  develop  as  a  prosperous  and  progressive 
peasant  state;  and  Greater  Rumania,  consisting  of  the  pres- 
ent kingdom,  augmented  by  the  Rumanian  districts  of  Hun- 
gary, Bukowina,  and  Bessarabia.  Behind  these  again  would 
stand  Greece  and  Bulgaria  as  national  States,  the  latter 
purged  of  her  evil  desire  to  exercise  hegemony  over  the 
Peninsula. 

The  events  of  the  war  have  amply  demonstrated  the 
Dual  Monarchy's  dependence  upon  German  discipline  and 
organizing  talent;  and  if  for  no  other  reason,  this  dependence 
will  tend  to  increase  more  and  more  rapidly,  as  the  result 
of  economic  exhaustion  and  imminent  bankruptcy.  Possible 
failure  in  other  directions  will  only  strengthen  Germany's 
hold  upon  the  Monarchy,  which,  according  to  the  Pan-Ger- 
man plan,  is  regarded  as  a  fertile  field  for  German  coloniza- 
tion. In  other  words,  we  are  faced  by  the  alternatives  of 
breaking  up  Austria-Hungary — in  which  case  Germany  ob- 
tains an  addition  of  eight  or  nine  million  inhabitants,  but 
is  restricted  to  her  natural  limits,  and  is  surrounded  by  new 
and  virile  national  states — or  of  permitting  its  survival  and 
thus  securing  to  Germany  the  final  assertion  of  political 
control  over  its  fifty-one  million  inhabitants,  and  thus  indi- 
rectly the  mastery  of  Central  Europe  and  the  control  of  the 
Adriatic,  the  Balkans,  and  Constantinople. 

It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that  there  is  no  prospect 
of  detaching  from  Germany  any  of  her  three  allies  by  any- 
thing short  of  overwhelming  military  success.  The  idea  that 
the  Dual  Monarchy,  which  was  rescued  from  disintegration 
by  its  German  ally's  energy  and  powers  of  reorganization, 
and  held  as  in  a  vise  by  the  iron  hand  of  Prussian  military 


380  THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE 

discipline  and  financial  pressure,  could  ever  be  detached  as 
a  whole  from  the  German  side,  is  altogether  too  fantastic  to 
be  discussed  seriously. 

Scarcely  more  plausible  is  the  idea,  still  entertained  in  a 
dwindling  circle  of  sentimentalists,  that  Hungary  could  be 
won  to  the  side  of  the  Allies.  Those  who  argue  thus  forget 
that  the  Anglomania  of  the  Magyar  aristocracy  upon  which 
they  reckon,  is  confined  to  country-house  life,  racing,  and 
tailors'  fashions,  and  that  the  glib  phrases  about  liberty  and 
constitution  in  which  they  so  freely  indulge  are  mere  orna- 
ments to  conceal  the  grossest  racial  tyranny  which  mod- 
ern Europe  has  witnessed.  Budapest  and  Berlin  are  equally 
responsible  for  this  war;  and  on  its  successful  issue  for  the 
Central  Powers  depend  the  last  hopes  of  the  hateful  policy 
of  Magyarization  which  Hungarian  statesmen  have  pursued 
so  fiercely  since  1867. 

The  twentieth  century  is  the  century  of  the  Slav,  and  it 
is  one  of  the  main  tasks  of  the  war  to  emancipate  the  hitherto 
despised,  unknown,  or  forgotten  Slavonic  democracies  of 
central  and  southern  Europe  If  the  Poles,  the  Czecho-Slo- 
vaks,  and  the  Jugo-Slavs  succeed  in  reasserting  their  right 
to  independent  national  development,  and  to  that  close  and 
cordial  intercourse  with  the  West  to  which  they  have  always 
aspired,  they  will  become  so  many  links  between  the  West 
and  their  Russian  kinsmen,  and  will  restore  to  Europe  that 
idealism  which  Prussian  materialist  doctrine  was  rapidly 
crushing  out.  Establish  one  nation  supreme  over  the  Con- 
tinent, controlling  the  destinies  of  a  whole  group  of  its  neigh- 
bors, and  you  must  surely  inaugurate  a  new  era  of  arma- 
ments and  racial  strife,  accentuated  tenfold  by  revolution, 
bankruptcy,  and  social  upheaval.  The  theory  of  racial  domi- 
nation, whether  it  be  Prussian,  Magyar,  Turk,  or  Bulgarian, 
must  be  replaced  by  a  program  of  free  and  untrammeled  de- 
velopment for  every  race.  The  supernation  must  follow  the 
superman  into  the  limbo  of  history. 

THE  MANIFESTO  OF  THE  "INTELLECTUALS" 

[The  following  is  the  full  text  of  the  Petition  agreed  on 
by  352  leading  German  professors,  330  diplomatists,  and  185 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE  381 

superior  Government  officials,  at  a  meeting  held  on  June 
20,  1915,  in  the  Kiinstlerhaus ,  Berlin,  for  the  purpose  of  its 
presentation  to  the  German  Imperial  Chancellor.] 

The  German  people  and  their  Emperor  have  preserved 
peace  for  forty-four  years,  preserved  it  until  its  further 
maintenance  was  incompatible  with  national  honor  and  se- 
curity. Despite  her  increase  in  strength  and  population, 
Germany  never  thought  of  transgressing  the  narrow  bounds 
of  her  possessions  on  the  European  Continent  with  a  view 
to  conquest.  Upon  the  world's  markets  alone  was  she  forced 
to  make  an  entry,  so  as  to  insure  her  economic  existence 
by  peacefully  competing  with  other  nations. 

To  our  enemies,  however,  even  these  narrow  limits  and 
a  share  of  the  world's  trade  necessary  to  our  existence  seemed 
too  much,  and  they  formed  plans  which  aimed  at  the  very 
annihilation  of  the  German  Empire.  Then  we  Germans  rose 
as  one  man,  from  the  highest  to  the  meanest,  realizing  that 
we  must  defend  not  only  our  physical  existence  but  also 
our  inner,  spiritual,  and  moral  life — in  short,  defend  Ger- 
man and  European  civilization  (Kultur)  against  barbarian 
hordes  from  the  east,  and  lust  for  vengeance  and  domination 
from  the  west.  With  God's  help,  hand  in  hand  with  our 
trusty  allies,  we  have  been  able  to  maintain  ourselves  victori- 
ously against  half  a  world  of  enemies. 

Now,  however,  although  another  foe  has  arisen,  in  Italy, 
it  is  no  longer  sufficient  for  us  merely  to  defend  ourselves. 
Our  foes  have  forced  the  sword  into  our  hands  and  have 
compelled  us  to  make  enormous  sacrifices  of  blood  and 
treasure.  Henceforth  our  aim  is  to  protect  ourselves  with 
all  our  might  against  a  repetition  of  such  an  attack  from 
every  side — against  a  whole  succession  of  wars  which  we 
might  have  to  wage  against  enemies  who  had  again  become 
strong.  Moreover,  we  are  determined  to  extend  our  ter- 
ritory and  to  establish  ourselves  so  firmly  and  so  securely 
upon  it  that  our  independent  existence  shall  be  guaranteed 
for  generations  to  come. 

As  to  these  main  objects,  the  nation  is  unanimous  in  its 
determination.  The  plain  truth,  which  is  supported  by  evi- 
dence from  all  sides,  is  this : — In  all  classes  of  the  people 


2,82 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE 


there  is  only  one  single  fear,  which  is  most  prevalent  and 
deep-seated  in  the  most  simple-minded  sections,  viz.,  the 
fear  that  illusory  ideas  of  reconciliation,  or  even  perhaps  a 
nervous  impatience,  might  lead  to  the  conclusion  of  a  prema- 
ture and  consequently  patched-up  peace  which  could  never 
be  lasting;  and  that,  as  happened  a  hundred  years  ago,  the 
pen  of  the  diplomats  might  ruin  what  the  sword  has  victori- 
ously won,  and  this  perhaps  in  the  most  fateful  hour  of 
German  history,  when  popular  feeling  has  attained  an  in- 
tensity and  unanimity,  which  were  never  known  in  the  past 
and  will  not  so  easily  recur  in  the  future. 

Let  there  be  no  mistake.  We  do  not  wish  to  dominate  the 
world,  but  to  have  a  standing  in  it  fully  corresponding  to  our 
great  position  as  a  civilized  Power  and  to  our  economic  and 
military  strength.  It  may  be  that,  owing  to  the  numerical 
superiority  of  our  enemies,  we  cannot  obtain  at  a  single 
stroke  all  that  is  required  in  order  thus  to  insure  our  na- 
tional position;  but  the  military  results  of  this  war,  obtained 
by  such  great  sacrifices,  must  be  utilized  to  the  very  utmost 
possible  extent.  This,  we  repeat,  is  the  firm  determination 
of  the  German  people. 

To  give  clear  expression  to  this  resolute  popular  determi- 
nation, so  that  it  may  be  at  the  service  of  the  Government 
and  may  afford  it  strong  support  in  its  difficult  task  of  en- 
forcing Germany's  necessary  claims  against  a  few  faint- 
hearted individuals  at  home  as  well  as  against  stubborn  ene- 
mies abroad,  is  the  duty  and  right  of  those  whose  education 
and  position  raise  them  to  the  level  of  intellectual  leaders 
and  protagonists  of  public  opinion.  We  appeal  to  them  to 
fulfill  this  duty. 

Being  well  aware  that  a  distinction  must  be  drawn  be- 
tween the  objects  of  the  war  and  the  final  conditions  of  peace, 
that  everything  of  necessity  depends  on  the  final  success  of 
our  arms,  and  that  it  cannot  be  our  business  to  discuss  Aus- 
tria-Hungary's and  Turkey's  military  objects,  we  have 
drawn  up  the  following  brief  statement  of  what,  according 
to  our  conviction,  constitutes  for  Germany  the  guarantee  of 
a  lasting  peace  and  the  goal  to  which  the  blood-stained  roads 
of  this  war  must  lead : 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE  383 

1.  France. — After  being  threatened  by  France  for  cen- 
turies, and  after  hearing  the  cry  of  revanche  from  18 15  till 
1870,  and  from  1871  till  191 5,  we  wish  to  have  done  with 
the  French  menace  once  for  all.  All  classes  of  our  people 
are  imbued  with  this  desire.  There  must  be  no  misplaced  at- 
tempts at  reconciliation,  which  have  always  been  opposed  by 
France  with  the  utmost  fanaticism;  and  as  regards  this, 
we  would  utter  a  most  urgent  warning  to  Germans  not  to 
deceive  themselves.  Even  after  the  terrible  lesson  of  this 
unsuccessful  war  of  vengeance,  France  will  still  thirst  for 
revanche,  in  so  far  as  her  strength  permits.  For  the  sake 
of  our  own  existence  we  must  ruthlessly  weaken  her  both 
politically  and  economically,  and  must  improve  our  military 
and  strategic  position  with  regard  to  her.  For  this  purpose, 
in  our  opinion,  it  is  necessary  to  effect  a  thorough  rectifica- 
tion of  our  whole  Western  frontier  from  Bel  fort  to  the  coast. 
Part  of  the  North  French  Channel-coast  we  must  acquire, 
if  possible,  in  order  to  be  strategically  safer  as  regards  Eng- 
land and  to  secure  better  access  to  the  ocean. 

Special  measures  must  be  taken,  in  order  that  the  German 
Empire  may  not  suffer  any  internal  injury  owing  to  this 
enlargement  of  its  frontiers  and  addition  to  its  territory.  In 
order  not  to  have  conditions  such  as  those  in  Alsace-Lor- 
raine, the  most  important  business  undertakings  and  estates 
must  be  transferred  from  anti-German  ownership  to  Ger- 
man hands,  France  taking  over  and  compensating  the  former 
owners.  Such  portion  of  the  population  as  is  taken  over 
by  us  must  be  allowed  absolutely  no  influence  in  the  Empire. 

Furthermore,  we  must  have  no  mercy  upon  France,  how- 
ever terrible  the  financial  losses  her  own  folly  and  British 
self-seeking  have  already  brought  upon  her.  We  must  im- 
pose upon  her  a  heavy  war  indemnity  (of  which  more  here- 
after), and  indeed  upon  France  before  our  other  enemies. 

We  must  also  not  forget  that  she  has  disproportionately 
large  colonial  possessions,  and  that,  should  circumstances 
arise,  England  could  indemnify  herself  out  of  these,  if  we 
do  not  help  ourselves  to  them. 

2.  Belgium. — On  Belgium,  in  the  acquisition  of  which 
so  much  of  the  best  German  blood  has  been  shed,  we  must 


384  THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE 

keep  a  firm  hold,  political,  military,  and  economic,  despite 
any  arguments  which  may  be  urged  to  the  contrary.  On  no 
point  is  public  opinion  so  unanimous.  The  German  people 
consider  it  an  absolutely  unquestionable  matter  of  honor  to 
keep  a  firm  hold  of  Belgium. 

From  the  political  and  military  standpoints  it  is  obvious 
that,  were  this  not  done,  Belgium  would  be  neither  more 
nor  less  than  a  basis  from  which  England  could  attack  and 
most  dangerously  menace  Germany — in  short,  a  shield  be- 
hind which  our  foes  would  again  assemble  against  us.  Eco- 
nomically Belgium  means  a  prodigious  increase  of  power 
to  us. 

Belgium  may  also  bring  us  a  considerable  addition  to  our 
population,  if  in  course  of  time  the  Flemish  element,  which 
is  so  closely  allied  to  us,  becomes  emancipated  from  the  arti- 
ficial grip  of  French  culture  and  remembers  its  Teutonic 
affinities. 

As  to  the  problems  which  we  shall  have  to  solve,  once 
we  possess  Belgium,  we  would  here  confine  ourselves  to 
emphasizing  the  following  principles: — (1)  The  inhabitants 
must  be  precluded  from  exercising  any  political  influence 
whatever  in  the  Empire;  and  (2)  the  most  important  busi- 
ness undertakings  and  estates  (as  in  the  districts  to  be  ceded 
by  France)  must  be  transferred  from  anti-German  owner- 
ship to  German  hands. 

3.  Russia. — On  our  Eastern  frontier  the  population  of 
the  Russian  Empire  is  increasing  on  an  enormous  scale — 
about  2l/2  to  3  millions  yearly.  Within  a  generation  a  popu- 
lation of  250  millions  will  be  attained.  Against  this  over- 
whelming pressure  of  numbers  on  our  eastern  flank,  un- 
doubtedly the  greatest  danger  to  the  German  and  European 
future,  Germany  can  hold  her  ground  only — (a)  if  a  strong 
boundary-wall  be  erected  both  against  the  advancing  tide  of 
Russification,  which  encroaches  imperceptibly  in  times  of 
peace,  and  also  against  the  menace  of  an  aggressive  war; 
and  (b)  if  we  adopt  all  possible  measures  to  maintain  the 
past  healthy  increase  of  our  population.  But  the  realization 
of  both  these  conditions  demands  land,  which  Russia  must 
cede  to  us.     It  must  be  agricultural  land  for  colonization — 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE  385 

land  which  will  yield  us  healthy  peasants,  the  rejuvenating 
source  of  all  national  and  political  energy;  land  which  can 
take  up  part  of  the  increase  of  our  population,  and  offer  to 
the  returning  German  emigrants,  who  wish  to  turn  their 
backs  on  hostile  foreign  countries,  a  new  home  in  their  own 
country;  land  which  will  increase  Germany's  economic  in- 
dependence of  foreign  countries,  by  developing  her  own  pos- 
sibilities of  food-production,  which  will  constitute  the  neces- 
sary counterpoise  to  the  advancing  industrialization  of  our 
people  and  the  increase  of  town-dwellers,  thus  conserving 
that  equilibrium  of  our  economic  resources  whose  inestima- 
ble value  has  been  proved  during  the  war,  and  saving  us  from 
the  dangerous  one-sidedness  of  the  English  economic  sys- 
tem; land  which  will  arrest  the  decline  of  the  birth-rate, 
check  emigration,  and  alleviate  the  dearth  of  dwelling- 
houses;  land  whose  re-settlement  and  Germanization  will 
provide  new  possibilities  of  livelihood  for  the  professional 
classes  also.  Such  land  for  our  physical,  moral,  and  intel- 
lectual health  is  to  be  found  above  all  in  the  East. 

The  measure  in  which  our  Eastern  frontier  is  to  be  ad- 
vanced will  depend  on  the  military  situation,  and  in  par- 
ticular also  it  should  be  determined  by  strategic  considera- 
tions. As  far  as  the  rectification  of  the  eastern  frontier  of 
Posen  and  Silesia  and  the  southern  frontier  of  East  Prussia 
is  concerned,  a  frontier  zone,  accessible  to  German  coloniza- 
tion and  as  far  as  possible  free  of  private  ownership,  must 
be  created.  This  German  frontier  zone  will  protect  the 
Prussian  Poles  against  the  direct  and  excessive  influence  of 
Russian  Poland,  which  will  perhaps  attain  its  independence. 
Moreover,  in  this  connection,  we  have  no  hesitation  what- 
ever in  drawing  special  attention  to  that  ancient  territory  in 
the  Russian  Baltic  Provinces  which  has  been  cultivated  by 
Germans  for  the  last  700  years.  It  is  sparsely  populated, 
its  soil  is  fruitful,  and  it  therefore  promises  to  have  a  great 
future  as  a  field  for  colonization,  whilst  its  Lithuanian,  Let- 
tish, and  Esthonian  population  is  derived  from  a  stock  alien 
to  the  Russians,  which  may  prove  a  reliable  source  of  that 
supply  of  journeyman-labor  which  we  so  urgently  need. 

We  based  our  demand  for  land  for  colonization  from 

W.,  VOL.  III.— 25. 


386 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE 


Russia  on  two  grounds — the  need  for  erecting  a  "boundary- 
wall"  and  the  need  for  maintaining  the  increase  of  our  popu- 
lation. But,  in  the  third  place,  land  is  the  form  in  which 
Russia's  war-indemnity  ought  to  be  paid  to  us.  To  obtain 
an  indemnity  from  Russia  in  cash  or  in  securities  will  prob- 
ably be  just  as  impossible  after  this  war  as  it  proved  after 
the  Russo-Japanese  war.  On  the  other  hand,  Russia  can 
easily  pay  an  indemnity  in  kind.  Russia  is  excessively  rich 
in  territory,  and  we  demand  that  the  territory  which  Russia 
is  to  surrender  to  us  in  lieu  of  a  war-indemnity  shall  be  de- 
livered to  us  for  the  most  part  free  of  private  ownership. 
This  is  by  no  means  an  outrageous  demand,  if  we  bear  in 
mind  Russian  administrative  methods.  The  Russian  popu- 
lation is  not  so  firmly  rooted  in  the  soil  as  that  of  Western 
and  Central  Europe.  Again  and  again,  right  up  to  the  early 
days  of  the  present  war,  Russia  has  transplanted  parts  of 
her  population  on  an  enormous  scale  and  settled  them  in 
far  distant  provinces.  The  possibilities  of  the  scheme  here 
proposed  must  not  be  judged  in  accordance  with  the  modest 
standards  of  German  civilization  (Kultitr).  If  the  ac- 
quisition of  political  control  over  territory  is  to  bring  with 
it  that  increase  of  power  which  we  so  urgently  need  for  our 
future,  we  must  also  obtain  economic  control  and  have  in  the 
main  free  disposition  over  it.  To  conclude  peace  with  Rus- 
sia without  insuring  the  diminution  of  Russian  preponder- 
ance, and  without  acquiring  those  territorial  acquisitions 
which  Germany  needs,  would  be  to  lose  a  great  opportunity 
for  promoting  Germany's  political,  economic,  and  social  re- 
generation, and  to  impose  upon  future  generations  the  burden 
of  the  final  settlement  with  Russia — in  other  words,  Ger- 
many and  European  civilization  would  be  confronted  with 
the  certainty  of  a  renewal  of  their  life-and-death  struggle. 
4.  England,  the  East,  Colonies,  and  Oversea 
Trade. — The  war  between  us  and  Russia  has  been  waged 
with  extraordinary  violence,  and  has  led  to  a  glorious  suc- 
cess for  our  arms ;  and  we  must  never  forget  the  menace  to 
our  future  presented  by  the  enormous  Russian  mass  en- 
camped on  our  Eastern  frontier,  if  we  should  fail  to  disinte- 
grate it.    Nevertheless,  we  must  never  for  one  moment  lose 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE  387 

sight  of  the  fact  that  this  war  is,  in  its  ultimate  origin,  Eng- 
land's war  upon  the  foreign  trade,  the  naval  power,  and 
the  world-prestige  of  Germany. 

Since  this  is  the  motive  of  England's  hostility  and  war 
against  us,  our  war-aims  against  England  are  clear.  We 
must  wrest  a  free  field  for  our  foreign  trade,  we  must  en- 
force the  recognition  of  our  naval  power  and  our  world- 
prestige  in  spite  of  England. 

We  admit  that  England  has  taught  us  one  lesson  by  her 
blockade,  which  has  compelled  Germany  to  reorganize  her- 
self for  the  duration  of  this  war  as  a  self-contained  indus- 
trial state;  for  we  have  learned  that,  before  and  above  all, 
we  must  win  and  secure  a  wider  territorial  basis  in  Europe 
(as  is  explained  in  detail  above),  in  order  that  we  may  stand 
before  the  world  in  the  utmost  possible  political,  military 
and  economic  independence.  And  we  must  also  create  on 
the  Continent  the  widest  possible  sphere  of  economic  in- 
terest, directly  contiguous  with  our  country's  frontiers  (i.e., 
avoiding  sea-routes),  so  as  to  free  ourselves  as  far  as  possible 
from  dependence  upon  the  good  pleasure  of  England  and  of 
the  other  world-empires,  whose  self-sufficiency  and  exclusive- 
ness  are  constantly  increasing.  In  this  respect  our  political 
friendship  with  Austria-Hungary  and  Turkey,  which  is 
bound  to  throw  open  the  Balkans  and  Western  Asia  to  us,  is 
of  the  first  importance.  It  is  therefore  necessary  that  Aus- 
tria-Hungary, the  Balkans,  Turkey,  and  Western  Asia,  down 
to  the  Persian  Gulf,  should  be  permanently  secured  against 
the  covetousness  of  Russia  and  England.  Commercial  rela- 
tions with  our  political  friends  must  be  furthered  by  all  avail- 
able means. 

But,  in  the  second  place,  it  must  be  our  aim  to  reenter  the 
world's  oversea  markets,  in  spite  of  England,  and  even 
though  we  have  already  safeguarded  our  foundations  on  the 
Continent.  Undoubtedly  it  will  be  necessary  to  change  the 
direction  of  a  considerable  part  of  our  oversea  trade;  but 
we  shall  also  have  to  conquer  anew  our  old  trade  and  ship- 
ping connections.  Herein  we  shall  in  future  stand  upon  our 
own  feet,  and  shall,  e.g.,  eliminate  the  hitherto  customary 
mediation  of  English  bankers  and  brokers,  English  arbitrage 


388  THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE 

and  exchange  business,  and  the  preponderance  of  English 
marine  insurance  companies.  England  has  wantonly  de- 
stroyed in  us  the  trust  and  confidence  which  all  such  transac- 
tions require,  and  must  pay  the  penalty  by  losing  the  profits 
which  she  has  hitherto  derived  from  them  at  the  expense  of 
German  trade.  In  Africa  our  aim  must  be  to  rebuild  our 
Colonial  Empire,  making  it  more  self-contained  and  stronger 
than  before.  Central  Africa  alone  would,  it  is  true,  give  us 
a  great  extent  of  territory,  but  the  value  of  the  colonial  prod- 
ucts which  it  contains  does  not  correspond  to  its  size.  We 
must  therefore  look  to  other  quarters  of  the  globe  also,  if 
we  are  to  secure  adequate  acquisitions.  From  this  point  of 
view  the  importance  of  a  permanent  connection  with  the 
world  of  Islam  and  the  vital  necessity  of  a  safe  ocean  high- 
way are  once  more  plainly  evident.  Those,  therefore,  who 
insist  upon  colonies  at  the  sacrifice  of  our  security  against 
England's  naval  tyranny  over  the  Channel — those  who  insist 
upon  colonies  in  return  for,  and  subject  to,  our  surrender 
of  Belgium — not  only  fail  to  realize  that  the  acquisition  of 
an  extended  European  basis  for  our  Fatherland  is  far  more 
important  than  all  colonial  possessions ;  they  are  also  guilty 
of  the  grave  political  blunder  of  aspiring  to  colonial  posses- 
sions without  securing  their  maritime  communications,  i.e., 
colonial  possessions  which  will  once  more  be  dependent  on 
England's  arbitrary  will. 

We  must  have  the  freedom  of  the  seas.  For  this — which 
is  to  benefit  all  peoples  alike— we  are  wrestling  with  Eng- 
land. And  if  we  are  to  enforce  it,  the  first  requisite  is  to 
establish  ourselves  firmly  upon  the  Channel,  facing  England. 
As  we  have  already  explained  above,  we  must  retain  a  firm 
hold  upon  Belgium,  and  we  must,  if  possible,  conquer  part 
of  the  Channel-coast  of  Northern  France  in  addition.  Fur- 
ther, we  must  break  the  chain  of  England's  naval  bases, 
which  encircles  the  globe,  or  weaken  it  by  a  corresponding 
acquisition  of  German  bases.  But  Egypt,  which  connects 
English  possessions  in  Africa  with  those  in  Asia  and  con- 
verts the  Indian  Ocean  into  an  English  sea  with  Australia 
for  its  distant  opposite  shore ;  Egypt,  which  forms  the  con- 
necting link  between  the  mother  country  and  all  her  Eastern 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE  389 

colonies : — Egypt  is,  as  Bismarck  said,  the  neck  of  the  Brit- 
ish Empire,  the  vise  in  which  England  holds  East  and  West 
in  subjection.  There  a  blow  may  be  dealt  at  England's  vital 
nerve.  If  it  is  successful,  the  international  trade  route  of 
the  Suez  Canal  must  be  freed  from  the  domination  of  a  single 
Power,  and  the  ancient  rights  of  Turkey  be  protected  as 
far  as  possible. 

But  England's  power  is  also  essentially  based  upon  the 
overwhelming  influence  which  she  exercises  on  the  Govern- 
ments and  the  Press  of  the  whole  world.  In  order  to  rem- 
edy this  state  of  affairs  and  to  secure  counter-influence  for 
Germany,  it  is  vitally  necessary  to  destroy  England's  monop- 
oly of  the  cable-service  and  press-agencies.  Our  best  ally 
in  our  fight  against  England's  influence  over  the  world's 
public  opinion  is  freedom — freedom  which  we  shall  bring 
to  all  nations  by  fighting  for  our  own  liberation  from  the 
yoke  imposed  by  England  upon  the  world.  We  must  not 
strive  to  dominate  and  exploit  the  world,  like  the  English : 
our  aim  should  be  to  safeguard  our  own  special  needs,  and 
then  to  act  as  pathmakers  and  leaders  of  Europe,  respecting 
and  securing  the  free  self-development  of  the  peoples. 

5.  Indemnity  for  the  War. — Finally,  as  regards  in- 
demnity for  the  war,  we  naturally  desire  such  an  indemnity 
as  will,  so  far  as  possible,  cover  the  public  cost  of  the  war, 
make  restoration  possible  in  East  Prussia  and  Alsace,  guar- 
antee the  establishment  of  a  pension  fund  for  cripples, 
widows,  and  orphans,  indemnify  private  individuals  for 
losses  inflicted  on  them  contrary  to  international  law,  and 
provide  for  the  renewal  and  further  development  of  our  arm- 
aments. 

But  we  are  aware  that  these  matters  depend  not  only  upon 
the  extent  of  our  military  successes  but  also  upon  the  finan- 
cial capacity  of  our  enemies.  If  we  found  ourselves  in  a 
position  to  impose  a  war-indemnity  upon  England — Eng- 
land, which  has  always  been  so  niggardly  in  sacrificing  the 
lives  of  its  own  citizens — no  sum  in  money  could  be  great 
enough.  England  has  set  the  whole  world  against  us,  and 
chiefly  by  her  money.  The  purse  is  the  sensitive  spot  in  this 
nation  of  shopkeepers.     If  we  have  the  power,  we  must 


390  THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE 

strike  at  her  purse  above  all  else  and  without  any  considera- 
tion whatever.  In  all  probability,  however,  we  shall  have 
to  look  to  France  (primarily,  if  not  exclusively)  for  our 
financial  indemnification.  And  we  ought  not,  from  a  mis- 
taken idea  of  generosity,  to  hesitate  to  impose  upon  France 
the  heaviest  indemnity.  Let  France  turn  to  her  ally  across 
the  Channel  for  the  alleviation  of  this  enforced  burden.  If 
England  refuses  to  fulfill  her  financial  obligations  towards 
her  ally,  we  shall  have  secured  an  incidental  political  ad- 
vantage with  which  we  may  be  well  contented. 

But  we  are  primarily  concerned  to  insist  that,  important 
as  it  is  to  adopt  retrospective  measures  for  the  mitigation 
of  the  injuries  we  have  already  suffered,  it  is  still  more  vi- 
tally important  to  secure  such  terms  of  peace  as  will  throw 
open  to  our  people  new  paths  for  a  vigorous  future  develop- 
ment; and  in  proportion  as  a  financial  indemnity  is  unob- 
tainable, increased  political  and  moral  justification  attaches 
to  all  the  demands  set  forth  above  for  the  acquisition  of 
territory,  for  an  additional  supply  of  productive  labor  for 
our  manufactures,  and  for  colonies.  If  we  win  in  this  titanic 
struggle,  we  must  not  emerge  from  it  with  losses.  Other- 
wise, despite  all  our  victories,  posterity  will  view  us  as  the 
conquered  party. 

We  refrain  from  expressing  any  decided  opinion  on  the 
weighty  question  of  the  mode  of  payment,  but  we  would  draw 
attention  to  the  following  point.  It  would  be  greatly  to  our 
interest  if  a  considerable  part  of  the  indemnity  were  paid 
in  the  form  of  foreign  securities  of  such  a  kind  that  their 
possession  would  strengthen  our  economic  position  in  the 
countries  of  our  political  friends,  whilst  freeing  the  latter 
from  the  preponderant  influence  of  England  and  France. 

6.  A  Policy  of  Civilization  (Kulturpolitik)  can 
only  be  based  on  a  Policy  of  Power. — If  the  signatories 
of  this  Petition — particularly  the  men  of  science,  the  artists, 
and  ecclesiastics — are  reproached,  on  the  ground  that  the  de- 
mands which  they  put  forward  are  solely  to  promote  Ger- 
many's political  and  economic  power,  and  perhaps  also  to 
satisfy  some  of  her  social  requirements,  whilst  the  purely 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE  391 

spiritual  tasks  of  Germany's  future  have  been  forgotten,  our 
answer  is  as  follows : 

Care  for  the  development  of  the  German  Mind  and 
Genius  (die  Sorge  urn  den  dentschen  Geist)  cannot  be  made 
a  war-aim  or  a  condition  of  peace. 

If,  nevertheless,  we  are  to  say  a  few  words  on  this  sub- 
ject, our  position  is  briefly  this.  The  German  Mind  is,  in 
our  opinion,  beyond  all  doubt  our  one  supremely  valuable 
asset.  It  is  the  one  priceless  possession  amongst  all  our 
possessions.  It  alone  justifies  our  people's  existence  and 
their  impulse  to  maintain  and  assert  themselves  in  the  world ; 
and  to  it  they  owe  their  superiority  over  all  other  peoples. 
But,  in  the  first  place,  we  must  emphatically  insist  that,  if 
Germany  is  to  be  free  to  pursue  her  spiritual  vocation,  she 
must  first  of  all  secure  her  political  and  economic  inde- 
pendence. And,  secondly,  to  those  who  advocate  the  so-called 
Policy  of  Civilization  (Kulturpolitik)  alone,  to  those  whose 
watchword  is  "The  German  Mind  without  the  Policy  of 
Power,"  we  reply:  "We  have  no  use  for  a  'German  Mind' 
which  is  in  danger  of  becoming,  as  it  were,  an  uprooted  na- 
tional spirit,  in  danger  of  being  itself  disintegrated  and 
the  cause  of  disintegration  in  others.  We  have  no  use  for 
a  Mind  which,  having  no  healthy  national  body  of  its  own, 
is  driven  to  seek  vainly  in  every  country  for  a  home  and  to 
become  'all  things  to  all  men' — a  Mind  which  is  forced  to  be 
untrue  to  its  own  character  and  a  spurious  imitation  of  the 
character  of  the  nation  that  is  its  host.  If  the  demands  which 
we  have  formulated  are  satisfied,  we  shall  create  the  neces- 
sary healthy  body  for  the  German  Mind.  The  expansion  of 
the  national  body  which  we  have  demanded  will  do  the  Ger- 
man Mind  no  injury,  provided  the  precautions  upon  which 
we  have  also  insisted  are  observed.  On  the  contrary,  sub- 
ject to  those  precautions,  such  an  expansion  will  strengthen 
the  German  Mind  by  providing  it  with  wider  opportunities." 

We  are  well  aware  that  the  aims  which  we  have  proposed 
are  great,  and  that  their  attainment  is  impossible  without  a 
spirit  of  resolute  self-sacrifice  and  the  most  energetic  skill 
in  negotiation.  But  we  appeal  to  a  sentence  of  Bismarck's : 
"It  is  palpably  true  in  Politics,  if  it  is  true  anywhere,  that 


392  THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE 

'faith  removes  mountains,'  that  Courage  and  Victory  are 
not  cause  and  effect,  but  identical  with  one  another.'' 

BY  DR.    LUDWIG  STEIN 

The  First  Trip  of  the  All-German  Express  from  Berlin  to 

Constantinople 

Between  Budapest  and  Semlin  we  easily  made  up  the  little 
time  we  had  lost,  so  the  train  was  able  to  draw  up  at  the 
platform  in  Belgrade  with  true  Prussian  punctuality.  This 
was  at  6.45  in  the  morning,  and  with  the  brilliant  sun  and 
the  clear  sky  we  could  see  the  former  capital  of  Serbia  from 
the  station  at  Semlin.  The  ruins  of  the  great  railway  bridge 
lay  on  both  banks  of  the  Save — it  had  been  blown  up  the 
day  after  the  declaration  of  war.  The  famous  pontoon 
bridge  which  the  German  engineers  had  erected  in  its  place 
is  a  wonderful  monument  of  the  rapid  strategic  technic  of 
our  army.  Belgrade  was  just  waking  up  as  we  approached, 
and  when  we  arrived  at  the  station  I  could  hardly  believe 
my  eyes.  I  had  expected  to  see  every  sign  of  ravage  and 
ruin,  but  I  found  instead  a  completely  new  station  which  had 
never  felt  the  effects  of  a  shell.  Here  again  our  military 
sense  of  order  had  rebuilt  in  a  few  weeks  the  buildings  which 
the  guns  had  destroyed,  so  that  one  was  forced  to  say  that 
the  inevitable  victory  must  surely  fall  to  those  who  have 
proved  their  abilities  both  in  destruction  and  in  restoration. 

In  Semlin  and  in  Belgrade,  as  well,  we  saw  large  num- 
bers of  Russian  prisoners  who  looked  at  the  new  train  as  if 
it  had  been  some  fabulous  animal — doubtless  not  knowing 
that  this  latest  journey  meant  a  stab  at  the  heart  of  territory 
which  Russia  had  been  longing  for  ever  since  the  time  of 
Peter  the  Great.  Thanks  to  the  bravery  of  our  gallant  sol- 
diers, we  could  now  travel  through  a  single  geographical 
stretch  of  territory  from  Hamburg  to  Constantinople.  A 
cruel  awakening,  symbolized  by  this  very  "Balkan  train"  we 
are  traveling  in,  follows  Russia's  century-old  dream.  The 
dream  has  been  fulfilled,  but  negatively.  The  dream  has  be- 
come a  reality,  not  for  the  Russians,  but  for  us. 

The  ravages  of  war  are  more  in  evidence  when  we  leave 
the  station  at  Belgrade.     Of  the  dwelling  houses  in  the 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  MID-EUROPE  393 

neighborhood,  only  heaps  of  stones  remain.  The  suburbs, 
too,  have  suffered,  and  I  noticed  whole  streets  in  which  every 
house  had  suffered  from  shell-fire.  But  in  comparison  with 
the  suburbs,  one  of  the  railway  officials  at  the  station  assured 
me  the  town  of  Belgrade  itself  was  not  much  injured.  The 
people  had  returned  to  their  occupations  for  the  most  part, 
and  more  or  less  normal  life  was  now  in  evidence. 

Outside  Belgrade  the  country  presented  a  desolate  ap- 
pearance, much  of  it  being  under  water.  Soon  after  we  had 
passed  the  Avala  Hill,  which  cost  us  hecatombs  of  men,  we 
came  to  the  plains,  and  here  there  was  a  distinct  improve- 
ment. The  fields  were  cultivated,  and  the  villages  seemed 
to  be  as  peaceful  as  if  nothing  whatever  had  happened  to 
the  Serbian  dynasty.  The  houses  had  not  suffered  much ; 
but  there  were  few  men  to  be  seen — mostly  women  and 
children  and  Russian  prisoners  working  under  supervision. 
Our  troops  leave  the  local  inhabitants  to  themselves,  and 
order  has  been  restored. 

The  Morava  Valley  was  not  gained  without  hard- fought 
battles,  but  there  are  no  signs  of  strife  now.  All  traces  of 
the  war  have  been  removed,  and  normal  life  has  been  re- 
sumed. Here  again,  however,  men  are  scarce,  and  the  work 
is  being  done  by  the  women.  We  are  now  at  Jagodina, 
where  the  wild  strawberries  ripen  early  in  May ;  the  mild  cli- 
mate of  the  place  made  it  a  favorite  resort  of  wealthy  Bel- 
grade merchants.  So  mild,  indeed,  was  the  climate  in  the 
middle  of  December  last,  as  a  German  General  told  me,  that 
the  troops  were  able  to  bathe  in  the  Morava  River. 

The  restaurant  car  was  put  on  at  Nish,  and  thence  the 
journey  to  Sofia  was  rapid.  The  nearer  we  approached  the 
Bulgarian  capital  the  fewer  sights  of  war  did  we  see.  The  • 
roads  were  better,  the  villages  more  active,  the  aspect  of  the 
inhabitants  more  contented.  A  warm  welcome  awaited  us 
at  Sofia,  and  now  we  are  off  to  Constantinople. 


THE  SERBIAN   EXODUS 

THE  AWFUL  WINTER  FLIGHT  ACROSS  THE  MOUNTAINS 
AND  THE  AGONIES  OF  THOSE  LEFT  BEHIND 


NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 


HENRI  BARBY 
DR.   NIERMEIJER 


FORTIER  JONES 
ANTHANASIADOS 


DR. 
KOSTA  NOVAKOVITCH 

"The  Exodus  of  a  Nation,"  that  is  what  the  awful  march  of  the 
Serbs  across  the  Albanian  mountains  has  well  been  called.  Crushed 
by  the  overwhelming  masses  of  their  foes,  the  Serbians  on  November 
16th  abandoned  their  temporary  capital  of  Mitrovitza.  The  whole 
nation  knew  then  that  their  cause  was  hopeless.  They  had  some 
forewarning,  too,  of  the  hideous  treatment  the  survivors  would  re- 
ceive at  Teuton,  Hungarian,  and  especially  at  Bulgarian  hands. 

So,  boys  as  well  as  men,  and  frequently  women  and  children  also, 
fled  southward  and  westward  with  the  retreating  armies.  By  the  end 
of  November  the  fugitives  were  all  crowded  up  against  the  Albanian 
mountains  in  the  region  around  Ipek.  They  must  either  surrender 
or  scale  the  huge,  winter-locked  mountain  wall.  All  of  the  soldiers 
and  many  of  the  civilians  chose  the  desperate  and  deadly  journey. 
On  foot  and  with  but  the  scantiest  remnants  of  food  they  attempted 
a  feat  few  of  our  western  folk  could  have  accomplished  with  the 
best  of  appliances  and  provisions.  The  women  and  boys  perished ; 
only  the  hardiest  men  survived. 

Pictures  from  that  exodus  are  here  sketched  by  foreigners  who 
saw  some  part  of  it.  Barby,  a  French  war-correspondent,  witnessed 
its  earlier  stages  at  Mitrovitza.  Jones,  the  daring  American  cor- 
respondent, saw  the  departure  from  Ipek  and  some  of  the  most  awful 
horrors  of  the  flight.  Savic,  the  Serbian  historian,  claims  that  even 
in  its  flight,  the  army  by  refusing  to  surrender,  saved  the  Allied 
cause  from  further  disaster.  He  says :  "The  enemy  was  able  to 
conquer  Serbia  thanks  only  to  its  all-powerful  artillery.  In  Albania 
it  was  of  no  use,  therefore  he  slackened  his  pursuit  and  dared  not 
attack.  That  gave  the  Allies  time  to  reenforce  the  Salonika  front,  and 
by  fortifying  it  to  make  their  position  impregnable.  This  fact  surely 
played  a  decisive  part  in  creating  a  new  situation  in  the  Balkans  fa- 
vorable to  the  Allies.  Had  the  Serbs,  instead  of  retreating  over  Al- 
bania, taken  the  direction  of  Salonika,  the  situation  for  the  Allies 
would  have  been  far  worse.  The  Austro-Germans,  reenforced  by  the 
Bulgars,  would  have  quickly  followed  them  with  a  force  half  a  mil- 
lion strong,  would  have  swept  them  from  Greek  territory.  Salonika 
most  probably  would  have  passed  into  the  Austro-German-Bulgarians' 
hands,  and  the  Balkan  situation  would  have  been  irretrievably  lost 
for  the  Allies. 

394 


THE  SERBIAN  EXODUS  395 

"The  royal  family,  also  in  this  wholesale  suffering,  shared  unre- 
servedly the  lot  of  the  Serbian  army  and  nation.  Old  King  Peter, 
broken  down  by  age  and  sickness,  delayed  his  retreat  to  the  last  mo- 
ment, and  shared  his  bread  and  shelter  with  the  common  soldiers. 
The  Prince  Regent  Alexander,  exhausted  by  fatigue  and  mental  ef- 
fort, never  parted  from  his  troops.  His  noble  courage  and  devotion 
to  the  nation  did  much  for  the  rebirth  of  the  Serbian  army,  whose 
deeds  on  the  Monastir  front  speak  better  than  any  words  of  mine  for 
its  valor  and  devotion  to  the  common  cause." 

There  remains  an  even  grimmer  story  to  be  told — the  treatment 
of  those  who  were  unable  to  flee  across  the  mountains,  their  torture 
by  the  mad  devotees  of  world-lordship,  determined  to  exterminate 
this  nation  which  had  blocked  their  road.  The  worshipers  of  devil- 
ideas  soon  become  devils  in  deed.  So  unbelievable  are  the  true  de- 
tails of  this  long  continued  atrocity  that  they  are  first  presented  here 
in  the  official  statement  of  a  neutral  committee  from  Holland,  men 
whose  sympathies  and  whose  training  would  prevent  exaggeration. 
Dr.  Niermeijer  was  president  of  this  committee.  Then  we  let  some 
Serbians  speak  for  their  martyred  countrymen.  Dr.  Anthanasiados 
was  a  Serbian  government  physician.  M.  Novakovitch  was  a  Serbian 
editor  in  Belgrade  who  escaped  to  France,  and  was  there  made  Sec- 
retary of  the  Serbian  Trade  Unions.  He  represents  the  masses  of 
his  people. 

C.   F.   H. 
BY  HENRI BARBY 

THE  destitution  of  the  Serb  soldiers  and  people  was  com- 
plete.    Most  of  them  were  in  rags  and  went  barefoot, 
and  they  lived  on  raw  cabbage  and  maize. 

But  all  the  miseries,  all  the  sufferings  which  I  had  till 
then  witnessed  were  as  nothing  beside  the  frightful  things  I 
saw  on  quitting  Mitrovitza.  We  had  hardly  proceeded  three 
miles  when  we  found  the  road  blocked  by  some  thirty  motor 
cars  and  lorries  imbedded  in  the  mud.  Soldiers  and  gangs 
of  prisoners  were  endeavoring  to  extricate  them  from  the 
quagmire.  Only  people  on  foot  or  on  horseback  could  get 
by — and  Lipliane  was  still  thirty  miles  off.  Finally,  after 
waiting  four  hours  I  set  off  on  foot  in  the  night,  and  after 
two  hours'  march  through  a  pelting  rain  I  reached  Vuchitru. 
On  the  next  day,  November  17th,  the  rain,  which  had  not 
ceased,  fell  in  torrents,  the  cold  became  sharper,  and  soon  a 
driving  snowstorm  covered  the  town,  the  immense  plain  of 
Kossovo,  and  the  surrounding  mountains.  The  road  alone 
was  darkened  by  the  crowd  of  fugitives  who  spent  the  night 
amid  the  storm,  stumbling  on  with  drooping  heads,  dazed 


396 


THE  SERBIAN  EXODUS 


with  fatigue,  suffering,  and  despair.  To  my  last  day  I  shall 
remember  that  fearful  march  across  the  plain  of  Kossovo 
from  Vuchitru  to  Prishtina.  Around  me  all  the  unhappy 
fugitives  were  exhausted.  Overcome  by  the  cold,  by  the 
sudden  snowstorm,  numbers  of  them  fell  on  the  road  among 
sunken  lorries,  overturned  and  broken  vehicles,  dead  oxen 
and  horses. 

None  of  the  pictures  recalling  the  retreat  from  Moscow 
gives  any  idea  of  the  terrifying  spectacle  spread  out  as  far 
as  the  eye  could  reach  in  all  its  tragic  reality.  I  saw  a  woman 
stretched  out  on  the  step  of  a  lorry  which  had  sunk  in  the 
mud.  She  was  straining  to  her  breast  a  baby  already  stark 
and  stiff.  She,  too,  was  dying  of  cold  and  hunger.  A  little 
girl — eight  years  at  most — shivering  under  a  tattered  shawl, 
was  vainly  trying  to  raise  her;  then,  scared  all  at  once  by  her 
mother's  frightful  silence,  she  burst  into  sobs  and  fell  on  her 
knees. 

Further  on,  again,  a  little  boy  was  cowering  by  the  ditch. 
Tears  were  streaming  down  his  wan  cheeks  and  his  teeth 
were  chattering.  I  questioned  him.  He  had  lost  his  parents 
and  had  eaten  nothing  for  two  days.  He  could  go  no  further. 
What  could  I  do?  I  gave  him  what  was  left  of  my  maize 
bread  and  went  on  with  sinking  heart  unable  to  restrain  my 
own  tears.  .  .  . 

The  first  time  I  witnessed  the  frightful  death  agony  it 
seemed  to  me  that  the  poor  wretch  who  was  dying  before  my 
eyes  was  intoxicated.  After  a  supreme  effort  to  rise,  he 
rolled  his  head  from  this  side  to  that  and  moved  his  legs. 
Then  his  movements  grew  feebler  till  they  ceased  entirely  and 
all  was  over. 

Right  through  that  awful  day  I  witnessed  the  agony  of 
the  Serb  people  in  that  same  valley  of  Kossovo  where  five 
centuries  earlier  the  first  great  Serb  Empire  had  gone  under. 

And  the  snow  kept  on  falling,  covering  the  dead  and  the 
dying  and  lashing  the  faces  of  those  who  still  held  out. 

BY    FORTIER    JONES 

It  seems  impossible  for  one  who  saw  it  to  speak  or  write 
coldly  about  this  period  of  the  retreat.    It  was  the  death  mo- 


THE  SERBIAN  EXODUS  397 

ment.  After  it  the  flight  over  the  mountains  seemed  merely 
the  instinctive  departure  of  men  who  for  the  most  part  did 
not  care  whether  they  lived  or  died.  All  three  armies  were 
crowding  toward  Tpek,  except  several  thousand  who  already 
had  gone  into  Albania  from  Prizrend.  The  road  having 
been  cut,  part  of  the  second  army  was  coming  across  coun- 
try, without  any  roads  at  all,  over  frozen  plains  and  snow- 
covered  hills,  fording  icy  streams  every  few  miles,  dragging 
their  cannon  and  ammunition  with  them.  The  three  field 
commanders  would  soon  hold  their  council  in  Ipek.  King 
Peter,  the  Crown  Prince,  General  Putnik,  and  the  General 
Staff  were  already  on  their  way  to  Scutari.  The  Allies  had 
failed  her;  Serbia  was  lost. 

Throughout  the  long  night  carts  struggled  up  to  the  mon- 
astery, and  men  bearing  stretchers  filed  in.  They  carried 
Serbian  officers,  many  wounded,  some  dead  from  cold  and 
the  cruel  exhaustion  of  the  carts.  I  do  not  love  Ipek,  but  I 
shall  be  dust  and  ashes  before  I  forget  it. 

Of  course  we  did  not  have  so  many  refugees  to  make  life 
terrible,  but  here  it  was  the  army  that  took  the  star  role  in 
our  masque  of  horror.  There  were  just  enough  civilians 
to  make  the  town  really  congested.  Around  it  on  the  ice 
and  snow  the  army  camped,  or,  rather,  lay  down  in  the  frosty 
open,  nursed  its  wounded,  and  took  stock  of  its  dead.  When 
I  saw  the  Serbian  soldiers  at  Ipek  I  said  to  myself  that  I  had 
seen  the  hardiest  men  on  earth  reduced  to  the  furthest  limit 
of  their  endurance.  Again,  like  the  quick-trip  journalists,  I 
was  very  ignorant  and  foolish.  Had  a  pressing  contract  to 
write  up  the  court  etiquette  of  Timbuctoo  in  1776  called  me 
hurriedly  away  at  the  moment,  in  all  good  faith  I  would  have 
cabled  any  newspaper  that  had  been  unfortunate  enough  to 
retain  me  that  the  Serbian  army  had  reached  the  end  of  its 
rope,  was  merely  scratching  around  in  the  snows  of  Ipek  for 
a  place  in  which  to  die,  and  would  never  get  ten  miles  over 
the  mountains  toward  Scutari.  I  might  have  padded  this 
information  with  more  or  less  veracious  details  of  hungry 
soldiers  eating  live  oxen  on  the  half-shell,  and  fastidious 
officers  living  on  consomme  made  from  expensive  Russian 


398  THE  SERBIAN  EXODUS 

boots,  and  in  all  probability  I  would  have  established  myself 
as  an  authority  on  Serbia. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  two  war  correspondents,  one  Eng- 
lish and  one  American,  did  find  time  and  inspiration  to  make 
part  of  the  retreat.  They  took  the  route  through  Albania 
to  Scutari  and  thence  to  Rome.  They  were  the  first  two ;  I 
happened  to  be  the  third  curiosity  to  arrive  in  the  Eternal 
City  from  the  great  retreat.  As  such,  Ambassador  Page 
questioned  me  extensively,  with  his  habitual  Southern  cour- 
tesy. Among  other  things,  he  asked  how  many  Serbian  sol- 
diers came  through.  When  I  replied,  not  less  than  one  hun- 
dred thousand,  he  laughed  politely,  but  very  heartily.  It 
was  impossible ;  it  could  not  be ;  besides,  the  two  eminent  cor- 
respondents differed  radically  from  me.  One  said  about 
thirty,  and  the  other  about  forty  thousand,  had  escaped.  Mr. 
Page  was  inclined  to  split  the  difference  at  thirty-five  thou- 
sand. Later  His  Highness  Alexander,  Prince  Regent,  an- 
nounced that  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  Serbs  were  now 
completely  reorganized,  reequipped,  and  sufficiently  rested 
to  fight  again  on  any  battlefield.  Sixteen  thousand  of  these 
came  out  by  way  of  Salonika,  the  rest  through  Albania  and 
Montenegro. 

The  army  that  huddled  around  the  cheerless  town  of  Ipek 
really  did  not  seem  to  have  enough  reserve  strength  to  make 
any  further  exertion.  I  knew,  as  I  looked  at  the  drab, 
bedraggled  groups  clustering  about  fires  that  their  transport- 
wagons  fed,  that  these  men  were  doomed  to  death  or  cap- 
ture at  Ipek.  Three  weeks  later,  watching  the  same  men 
crawl  into  Scutari,  I  knew  that  I  had  been  mistaken  previ- 
ously, but  that,  unless  Scutari  was  safe  for  months  and 
ample  food  and  clothing  came,  they  would  die  or  surrender 
there.  Further  mountain  retreating  for  that  mechanical 
mass,  scarcely  instinct  with  life,  was  impossible.  Again 
I  would  have  cabled  lies  to  my  paper.  I  was  ignorant  again. 
They  did  not  get  rest  at  Scutari  nor  at  San  Giovanni  di 
Medua,  but  they  made  the  indescribable  march  to  Durazzo 
on  rations  that  were  criminally  short,  hundreds  and  hun- 
dreds perishing  by  the  roadside,  and  then  they  fell  into  boats, 
and  only  on  the  islands  of  the  Adriatic  and  in  southern  Italy 


THE  SERBIAN  EXODUS  399 

did  they  find  food  and  rest.  Now,  after  scarcely  two  months, 
comes  the  amazing  announcement  that  they  are  ready  and 
eager  for  the  battle  again !  Such  were  the  men  I  saw  evacu- 
ating the  hospitals,  such  were  the  men  I  saw  crowding  the 
long  refugee  trains  in  the  indescribable  discomfort;  such 
were  the  men  I  saw,  wounded  and  bleeding,  tramping  the 
muddy  roads  through  the  wilderness ;  such  were  they  whom 
I  saw  freezing  and  starving  around  Ipek,  who  died  by  the 
hundreds  there  and  by  the  thousands  in  the  mountains ;  such 
were  they  who,  when  they  could  have  surrendered  with  bet- 
terment to  themselves,  and  dishonor  for  their  country,  did 
not,  but  made  a  retreat  as  brave  and  as  glorious  as  any  vic- 
tory of  this  or  any  other  war — a  retreat  that  dims  the  flight 
from  Moscow  in  suffering.  Such  is  the  Serbian  army,  the 
army  that  cannot  die. 

The  economic  life  of  Ipek  was  interesting.  Splendid 
oxen  could  be  bought  here  for  ten  or  fifteen  dollars  a  pair, 
their  former  price  being  about  one  hundred  and  twenty-five 
dollars.  The  food  situation  was  acute,  but  not  so  bad  as 
at  Prizrend.  However,  the  supply,  such  as  it  was,  was 
purely  temporary,  and  before  I  left  had  been  completely 
exhausted.  The  price  of  boots  was  a  phenomenon.  Since 
the  first  day  of  the  retreat  footgear  had  sold  at  constantly 
increasing  prices,  until  the  amount  paid  for  a  pair  of  boots 
was  fabulous,  amounting  to  sixty  or  seventy  dollars.  In 
the  streets  of  Ipek  there  were  quantities  of  excellent  Russian 
boots  for  sale  at  four  or  five  dollars,  the  normal  price  of 
these  in  Serbia  being  about  twenty  dollars.  Government 
magazines  had  been  thrown  open  to  the  soldiers,  and  many 
of  those  who  happened  to  be  more  or  less  decently  shod  pre- 
ferred to  sell.  So  the  bottom  dropped  out  of  the  boot  market. 
Bread,  however,  was  at  the  same  famine  prices  that  had 
prevailed  before.     I  saw  a  pound  loaf  sell  for  eight  dollars. 

The  council  between  the  three  generals  was  on.  All  com- 
munication with  the  General  Staff  was  cut  off.  It  devolved 
upon  the  field-commanders  to  decide  upon  the  final  abandon- 
ment of  Serbia.  Their  conference  lasted  two  days,  and,  ac- 
cording to  all  reports,  was  stormy.  General  Mishich  was 
for  an  offensive  even  at  that  date.     With  those  emaciated 


400  THE  SERBIAN  EXODUS 

regiments  out  there  in  the  frozen  fields,  killing  their  trans- 
port-beasts for  food,  burning  their  transport-wagons  for 
fuel,  and  having  enough  of  neither,  with  most  of  his  ammu- 
nition gone,  together  with  a  great  part  of  the  very  insuf- 
ficient artillery  which  the  army  had  possessed,  he  still  felt 
that  there  was  a  chance,  and  that  is  all  that  is  necessary  for 
the  Serbian  soldier.  They  are  not  fools,  they  do  not  die 
needlessly,  as  the  Montenegrins  are  popularly  reported  to  do, 
but  if  there  is  a  chance  life  counts  nothing  to  them.  During 
the  months  that  I  lived  with  them,  slept  with  them  on  the 
ground,  ate  their  bread,  saw  their  battle-lines,  I  learned  this 
beyond  all  else.  Soldier  for  soldier,  I  believe  them  to  be  the 
best  fighters  in  the  world.  Most  soldiers  are  brave  men ;  the 
Serb  is  also  a  marvelous  stoic,  a  rare  optimist,  and  built  of 
steel.  But  the  odds  there  were  too  great.  The  other  two 
generals  favored  the  course  which  was  carried  out  with  a 
very  remarkable  degree  of  success — a  general  retreat  through 
the  mountains  with  as  many  of  the  smaller  guns  and  as  much 
ammunition  as  possible.  So  the  evacuation  of  Ipek  was  an- 
nounced. 

[The  writer  secured  horses,  crossed  the  mountains  by  a 
circuitous  route  and  joined  the  survivors  on  the  Albanian 
coast.] 

On  leaving  Androvitze  we  had  come  each  day  more  in 
contact  with  the  army,  for  the  route  they  had  taken  joined 
ours  there.  Many  thousands  were  about  Podgoritze  when 
we  arrived,  and  many  more  thousands  had  already  reached 
Scutari.  Looking  at  these  filthy,  ragged,  starved,  ill  men, 
one  wondered  if  it  were  still  permissible  to  call  them  an 
army.  How  could  any  feeling  of  nationality  or  cohesion 
now  be  alive  in  this  dull,  horror-stricken  horde?  Could 
this  frayed  remnant,  these  hollow-eyed,  harassed  officers, 
these  soldiers,  as  mechanical  and  listless  as  automata,  be 
really  considered  a  military  force?  Had  not  that  rugged, 
surpassingly  brave  thing,  the  almost  mystical  esprit  de  corps 
which  had  endured  a  continuous  and  hopeless  retreat  for 
ten  weeks,  died  when  the  peaks  above  Ipek  shut  off  the  dis- 
tant Serbian  plains  ?  Had  not  the  story  of  Serbia  ended  in 
death  and  destruction  at  the  evacuation  of  Ipek? 


THE  SERBIAN  EXODUS  401 

It  is  true  that  the  retreat  through  Albania  and  Monte- 
negro was  only  a  tour  de  force  in  the  business  of  getting 
away.  At  the  moment  the  need  for  armies  had  ceased ;  there 
was  no  country  to  defend.  It  was  a  flight  without  military 
maneuvering,  merely  sauvc  qui  pent.  A  few  thousand  were 
able  to  find  food  and  equipment  sufficient  to  aid  the  Monte- 
negrins, and  in  Albania  about  twenty  thousand  were  actively 
engaged.  The  sole  object  of  all  the  others  was  to  reach 
Scutari,  where  it  would  be  "up  to"  the  Allies  to  reclothe,  re- 
arm, and  provision  them.  From  one  thousand  to  fifteen  hun- 
dred were  lost  in  Albania  by  savage  native  attacks.  Many 
hundreds  at  least  must  have  died  on  both  lines  of  march  from 
cold,  exposure,  and  starvation.  A  good  part  of  the  smaller 
artillery  was  saved.  The  soldiers,  weakened  as  they  were, 
went  through  incredible  hardships  to  effect  this.  In  many 
places  on  the  Montenegrin  route  it  had  been  necessary  to  take 
the  guns  to  pieces,  and  the  men  had  had  to  carry  the  heavy 
barrels  on  their  shoulders.  The  paths  were  slippery  with 
ice,  the  ascents  long  and  very  steep,  the  precipices  at  times 
dizzying,  the  cold  severe,  and  there  was  little  or  no  shelter. 

But  we  did  not  see  a  disorganized,  soulless  mass  about 
Podgoritze.  We  saw  the  cream  of  Serbia's  fighting  men, 
the  nearly  superhuman  residue  which  remained  after  shot 
and  shell,  disease,  exhaustion,  cold,  and  starvation  had  done 
their  cruel  censoring;  after  the  savage  teeth  of  frozen  peaks 
had  combed  out  all  but  the  strongest.  And  the  near-annihi- 
lation of  their  bodies  only  allowed  to  be  seen  more  clearly 
the  unfaltering  flame  of  their  determination  and  their  devo- 
tion to  the  glorious  quest,  the  temporary  loss  of  which  hurt 
them  more  deeply  than  all  they  had  to  bear.  Dauntless  and 
alone,  they  had  fought  the  unequal  battle,  and  defeat  was 
more  bitter  than  death. 

To  realize  at  all  what  the  loss  of  Serbia  means  to  the 
Serb,  one  must  consider  not  only  the  separation  from  home 
and  family;  one  must  understand  a  little  the  strength  and 
depth  of  the  Southern  Slav's  desire  for  a  free  Slav  nation. 
One  must  know  the  extent  to  which  this  idea  has  permeated 
all  his  thoughts,  all  his  literature,  all  his  folk-songs  for  five 

W.,  VOL.   III.— 26. 


402  THE  SERBIAN  EXODUS 

hundred  years.     One  must  have  learned  that  it  is  his  re- 
ligion. 

It  is  a  patriotism  that  is  astounding  in  its  capacity  for 
sacrifice.  It  is  firmly  and  irrevocably  resolved  on  the  libera- 
tion or  the  extermination  of  its  people.  Whether  one  agrees 
with  its  desires  or  not,  its  presence  is  undeniably  there, 
fiercely  blazing  in  the  desolate,  disease-swept  camps  of  that 
exiled  army.  Its  sorrow  is  not  of  physical  discomfort  or 
even  of  personal  loss.  Centuries  of  dogged  fighting  have 
taught  the  Serbs  to  accept  such  things  as  part  of  the  day's 
work.  Their  grief  is  deeper  than  that.  It  is  the  crushing 
sense  of  a  supreme  idol  broken. 

BY  DR.    NIERMEIJER 

Report  from  the  Holland  Section  of  the  "League  of  Neutral 

Countries,"  1917 

Deportations  from  Serbia  began  with  the  driving  forth 
of  5,000  men,  women,  and  children  by  the  Austrians  at  the 
time  of  the  occupation  of  Belgrade.  Because  of  bad  housing 
and  insufficient  food  one-half  of  these  unfortunates  suc- 
cumbed to  typhoid  fever  in  less  than  a  year. 

The  Bulgarians  made  their  first  use  of  deportations  in 
the  countries  that  had  been  given  to  Serbia  by  the  peace  of 
Bucharest  in  191 3,  notably  in  Southern  Serbia  and  a  part  of 
Macedonia.  Thus  they  deported  into  Bulgaria  almost  all 
the  Serbian  families  of  Prizren  and  Prishtina;  from  Prilep, 
170;  from  Krushevo,  70.  At  the  end  of  191 5  an  order 
was  given  to  assemble  and  conduct  away  all  the  male  popu- 
lation between  the  ages  of  15  and  70  years  from  the  districts 
of  Veles,  Poretch,  and  Prilep,  where  already  torrents  of 
blood  had  been  shed. 

The  Bulgarian  Bishop  of  Kitchevo,  who  had  just  been 
appointed,  protested.  He  wrote  to  King  Ferdinand  that 
such  a  measure  would  demonstrate  to  the  whole  world  that 
Macedonia  sympathized  with  Serbia  and  not  with  the  Bul- 
garians. This  argument  may  have  had  some  effect;  at  any 
rate,  the  King  ordered  that  the  deportations  should  cease, 
although  the  men  might  already  be  on  the  road.  However, 
500  notables  and  their  families  were  selected  and  interned  in 


THE  SERBIAN  EXODUS  403 

the  environs  of  Sofia.  Their  property  was  immediately 
confiscated  by  the  Bulgarian  Government  and  most  of  their 
houses  were  rented  to  Mohammedans. 

When  the  Rumanians  declared  war  the  deportations  were 
continued  in  still  greater  numbers,  both  by  the  Austrians  and 
by  the  Bulgars,  reaching  their  maximum  after  the  cap- 
ture of  Monastir.  The  victims  always  included  men, 
women,  and  children,  but  especially  men  of  17  to  70  years. 
A  special  method  was  applied  to  boys.  In  May,  191 6,  the 
reopening  of  the  schools  was  announced,  and  the  enrollment 
lists  were  accessible.  The  Austro-Hungarian  authorities 
had  the  lists  copied,  and  the  deportations  were  based  on 
these. 

Not  less  than  nine  internment  camps  for  Serbs  were  es- 
tablished in  Austria-Hungary,  three  of  the  principal  ones 
being  situated  in  the  Danube  marshes,  where  the  health  con- 
ditions are  extremely  bad;  the  most  distant  are  the  camps 
of  Heinrichsgriis  in  Bohemia  and  Braunau  in  Upper  Aus- 
tria, near  the  German  frontier.  In  that  at  Braunau  there  are 
not  less  than  35,000  Serbians;  it  is  quite  correct,  therefore, 
to  speak  of  deportations  en  masse.  Among  these  interned 
prisoners  one  finds  high  officials  of  the  Serbian  Govern- 
ment, members  of  the  Council  of  State,  Deputies,  besides 
physicians,  lawyers,  merchants,  etc.  The  sanitary  conditions 
are  very  bad  in  these  places,  where  the  Serbs  are  obliged  to 
live  in  great  wooden  barracks  that  are  penetrated  by  wind 
and  rain;  they  are  ill- fed,  and  are  compelled  to  sleep  upon 
straw  on  the  ground,  where  the  children  especially  are  dying 
in  great  numbers.  At  Braunau  there  was  an  epidemic  of 
typhus. 

Like  the  Austrians  and  Hungarians,  the  Bulgars  have 
been  making  deportations  since  July,  191 6,  from  all  the 
Serbian  territory  they  occupy.  The  northern  part  of  the 
country  is  subject  to  Bulgarian  rule.  The  families  deported 
by  the  Bulgarians  alone  in  the  last  six  months  of  1916  are 
estimated  at  10,000. 

The  Bulgarians  are  inhumane  in  their  treatment  of  pris- 
oners. They  do  not  permit  these  unfortunates  to  prepare 
themselves,  or  to  take  away  from  their  homes  even  the  most 


404  THE  SERBIAN  EXODUS 

indispensable  articles,  as  the  Germans  do  in  Belgium.  At 
Nish  prominent  persons  were  made  prisoner  in  the  streets 
without  permitting  them  to  say  good-by  to  their  families. 
The  largest  Serbian  internment  camp  in  Bulgaria  is  situ- 
ated in  a  swampy  plain  near  Sofia,  where  the  families  are 
housed  in  miserable  sheds,  and  where  they  are  dying  of  cold, 
hunger,  and  wretched  sanitary  conditions.  Thus  without 
any  military  necessity  a  part  of  the  Serbian  population  has 
been  systematically  killed.  What  is  the  object  of  such  ac- 
tions?    The  answer  will  be  found  in  what  follows. 

It  has  long  been  known  that  the  Museum  of  Belgrade 
was  pillaged  immediately  after  the  Austrian  occupation. 
The  same  thing  has  happened  to  the  Ethnographical  Mu- 
seum, which  contained  objects  of  high  value.  Not  a  single 
souvenir  of  the  history  or  the  life  of  the  nation  has  been 
left  there.  The  Bulgars  have  gone  still  further;  they  have 
deported  into  Bulgaria  all  the  priests  of  the  Serbian  Church. 
The  Bulgarian  Synod  has  sent  priests  from  Bulgaria  and 
subjected  all  the  occupied  country  to  the  Bulgarian  Ex- 
archate, which  was  obtained  by  force  from  the  Sultan  in 
1 87 1,  but  which  the  other  Orthodox  Greek  Churches  regard 
as  schismatic.  All  the  Serbian  churches  and  convents  have 
been  pillaged.  All  the  inscriptions  recording  the  founda- 
tion of  these  institutions  by  Serbian  Princes  have  been  broken 
with  axes.  The  famous  convents  of  Ravanitza  and  Manas- 
sia  have  suffered  most,  though  they  date  from  the  thirteenth 
century  and  had  been  respected  even  by  the  Turks. 

Furthermore,  whatever  the  Bulgars  have  found  written 
in  the  Serbian  language  they  have  destroyed  absolutely. 
With  this  object  they  have  made  house-to-house  search,  and 
have  confiscated  all  the  books  and  manuscripts,  even  those  of 
the  churches,  courts,  and  archives.  All  these  were  burned 
— until  the  Minister  of  Commerce  at  Sofia  ordered  all  papers 
to  be  sent  to  the  national  printing  office,  stating  that  they 
would  make  good  material  for  manufacturing  paper. 

Immediately  after  occupation  the  Bulgarian  authorities 
compelled  the  Serbs,  whose  family  names  usually  end  in 
"itch,"  to  change  that  termination  to  "off,"  like  those  of  Bul- 
garian families. 


THE  SERBIAN  EXODUS  405 

Naturally,  it  was  also  at  Belgrade  that  the  Serbian  teach- 
ers were  interned;  they  were  replaced  by  Bulgarians  and 
the  Bulgarian  language  was  made  compulsory.  The  children 
were  compelled  to  learn  the  popular  Bulgarian  songs  and 
heard  the  war  explained  from  the  Bulgar  viewpoint;  they 
were  given  to  understand  that  henceforth  they  were  Bul- 
garians. A  great  number  of  reading  rooms  were  opened, 
whose  names  recall  Bulgarian  patriots,  and  through  these 
centers  the  authorities  are  spreading  every  sort  of  writing 
in  favor  of  Bulgarian  chauvinism.  Thus  they  are  trying  to 
kill  the  spirit  of  the  Serbian  people. 

As  long  ago  as  October,  191 6,  Prime  Minister  Pashitch 
formulated  a  protest  in  the  name  of  the  Serbian  Government 
against  the  recruiting  of  Serbs  by  the  Bulgars.  Since  then 
the  Serbian  Government  has  received  many  Bulgarian  news- 
papers that  speak  openly  of  such  recruiting.  These  publi- 
cations refer  to  Macedonia,  but  from  other  sources  it  is 
learned  that  compulsory  recruiting  has  also  been  introduced 
into  Old  Serbia,  so  that  thousands  of  Serbs  have  been  forced 
to  fight  in  the  Bulgarian  army  against  their  own  country. 
We  do  not  know  whether  Bulgaria  has  denied  this  accusa- 
tion, which  is  extremely  grave. 

In  Macedonia  the  Bulgars  began  immediately  after  their 
arrival  to  put  to  death  the  authorities  of  cities  and  towns. 
These  murders  reached  extreme  proportions  in  the  three 
districts  of  Macedonia  which  we  have  mentioned  in  connec- 
tion with  deportations.  The  deported  victims  were  gen- 
erally the  objects  of  the  greatest  cruelty.  Some  were  obliged 
to  make  the  journey  on  foot,  poorly  clad,  without  shoes,  in 
the  terrible  cold;  they  were  given  only  half  a  loaf  of  bread 
a  week.  The  Bulgarian  soldiers  drove  them  onward  with 
blows  from  rifle  stocks,  like  cattle;  many  died  on  the  way. 

The  Austrian  soldiers  acted  with  the  same  brutality, 
driving  children  with  the  bayonet,  so  that  many  had  to  be 
taken  to  the  hospital  at  Szegedin;  women  about  to  become 
mothers  were  forced  to  march  with  the  rest.  Many  priests 
were  killed  by  the  Bulgarian  troops.  By  a  refinement  of 
cruelty  the  Serbs  who  fled  are  prevented  from  correspond- 
ing with  their  families  who  remained  behind. 


406  THE  SERBIAN  EXODUS 

We  have  believed  in  these  circumstances  that  it  was  our 
duty  to  cite  the  facts  more  in  detail  than  ordinarily.  Before 
the  Austro-Hungarian  and  Bulgarian  Governments  can  clear 
themselves  of  the  odium  imposed  by  this  simple  enumeration 
of  facts,  they  will  have  to  try  to  draw  up  a  denial  of  its  truth. 
We  believe  that  such  a  denial  will  be  very  difficult  to  formu- 
late. 

The  mass  of  documents  placed  at  our  disposal  has  left 
a  profound  impression  of  an  attempt  to  achieve  the  complete 
ruin  of  a  free  nation  by  means  the  most  brutal  and  cruel. 
Among  all  the  horrors  of  war  practiced  en  masse  against 
an  entire  nation,  the  worst  certainly  is  the  wholesale  murder 
of  the  Armenians  by  the  Turks  under  the  indifferent  or 
approving  eye  of  the  Germans.  The  systematic  destruction 
of  the  Serbian  Nation  is  a  pendant  to  the  enslavement  of 
Belgium.  The  latter,  perhaps,  has  suffered  more  in  certain 
regards,  because  it  is  nearer  to  one  of  the  fronts,  but  in  other 
respects  there  is  something  still  more  grave  in  the  treatment 
inflicted  upon  the  Serbians;  and  the  civilized  world  has 
known  less  about  it. 

Le  Temps  of  Paris  has  expressed  a  desire  to  see  the  neu- 
tral Governments  realize  that  they  also  have  signed  the  in- 
ternational conventions  which  have  been  violated,  adding  that 
now  is  the  moment  to  protest,  since  they  have  neglected  thus 
far  to  do  so.  We  also  have  formerly  expressed  the  same 
hope,  but  our  disillusionment  has  been  too  great ;  we  will  not 
return  to  that  prayer  again.  Happily  the  neutrals  that  have 
the  power  to  do  so  are  going  to  oppose  themselves  to  these 
crimes,  abandoning  their  neutrality.  The  only  thing  we  can 
do  is  to  take  care  that,  later,  no  one  can  say  that  from 
Holland  no  voice  was  raised  against  such  barbarities. 

Permanent  Committee  of  the  League  of  Neutral  Coun- 
tries: Niermeijer,  President. 

De  la  Faille,  Home  Secretary. 
Diepenbrock,    Foreign    Secretary. 

BY  DR.  ANTONY  ANTHANASIADOS 

When  the  Serbian  army  retreated  in  the  autumn  of 
1 91 5  I  was  at  my  headquarters  at  Prishmina  and  decided  to 


THE  SERBIAN  EXODUS  407 

stay  there.  Bulgarian  cavalry  entered  the  town  November 
nth,  followed  by  German  and  Austrian  infantry.  The  first 
day  the  troops  behaved  well.  On  the  morrow,  seeing  that 
the  shops  remained  closed,  the  troops  plundered  them  bare. 
The  Germans  led  in  the  pillage. 

The  violence  was  not  confined  to  the  shops,  but  private 
dwellings,  too,  were  looted.  The  houses  then  were  torn 
down  and  the  wood  was  used  for  fuel.  Several  forcible  con- 
tributions were  levied  upon  the  town,  provisions  being 
seized  whenever  they  were  not  forthcoming  on  demand.  The 
Germans  took  all  the  beds  from  the  Serbian  hospitals,  turn- 
ing adrift  the  occupants,  even  those  suffering  from  severe 
wounds.    These  beds  they  sent  to  Austria. 

Soon  the  invaders  began  to  intern  townsfolk,  principally 
school  teachers  and  priests,  of  whom  not  one  was  left  at 
liberty.  The  Turkish  residents  had  been  rejoicing  before 
the  arrival  of  the  allies  of  Turkey,  but  they  soon  had  cause 
to  regret  their  attitude.  One  Turkish  notable  told  me  his 
people  were  exasperated  beyond  endurance  by  the  dishon- 
oring of  their  women  at  the  hands  of  the  Bulgars  and  Aus- 
tro-Germans.  German  officers  were  among  the  criminals. 
Often  the  Turkish  citizens  were  compelled  to  be  the  specta- 
tors of  such  scenes. 

Finally  I  was  able  to  leave  and  arrived  at  Belgrade, 
where  I  found  conditions  similar.  The  houses  had  been  pil- 
laged and  many  trainloads  of  loot  sent  to  Austria.  I  was 
forced  to  proceed  to  Nish,  where  I  became  acquainted  with 
several  Bulgarians  whom  I  attended  in  my  professional  ca- 
pacity. One  of  them,  Dr.  Tendas,  related  that  he  caused 
twenty-four  Serbian  professors  to  be  brought  to  a  certain 
orchard,  where,  with  his  own  hands,  he  brained  them  all.  I 
overheard  another  Bulgarian  telling  quite  calmly  how  he 
had  killed  two  priests  and  two  school  teachers.  All  this  was 
done  with  the  object  of  eradicating  the  Serbian  population. 

ANONYMOUS  SERBIAN  LETTER  WRITTEN  IN   I9I7 

I  escaped  April  25th  from  the  Bulgarian  prison  where  I 
was  incarcerated  with  twenty  comrades  after  having  been 
surrounded  and  captured  in  the  revolt.     I  was  taken,  put  in 


408  THE  SERBIAN  EXODUS 

prison  and  condemned  to  be  hanged,  but  during  the  night  my 
friend arrived  with  a  band  in  Prokouplie,  killed  the  sen- 
tinels and  rescued  me.  In  consequence  I  was  able  to  reach 
the  mountains.  There  are  more  than  5,000  of  us  insurgents. 
Nearly  all  of  the  other  mountains  are  filled  with  insurgents. 

The  Bulgarians  had  summoned  all  the  male  population 
between  the  ages  of  16  and  65  in  order  to  incorporate  them 
in  the  army  and  send  them  immediately  to  the  front.  At 
the  same  time  they  had  gathered  together  all  the  young  peo- 
ple between  13  and  16  and  had  sent  them  to  Constantinople. 
It  was  this  vandal  process  of  these  monstrous  Mongols  that 
provoked  the  revolt. 

The  unfortunate  mothers,  exasperated  by  the  cries  of 
their  children  as  they  were  carried  off  by  force,  attacked  the 
Bulgarians  with  stones.  This  was  a  genuine  revolt,  to  which 
the  Bulgarians  replied  with  gibbets  to  which  they  hanged 
women  and  children.  Finally  the  people,  exhausted  and  re- 
volting, threw  themselves  upon  the  Bulgarian  despots.  Men 
and  women  carried  off  arms  and  ammunition,  first  to  Pro- 
kouplie, then  to  Leskovatz,  Lebane,  Vrania,  Viassotintze, 
Zayetchar,  Kniajevatz,  Pojarevatz,  and  the  villages. 

Meanwhile  two  Bulgarian  divisions  arrived,  and  a  bloody 
battle  developed ;  we  should  have  been  able  to  defeat  the  Bul- 
garians as  we  had  defeated  the  Germans  if  they  had  not 
used  a  cowardly  strategy  to  prevent  us  from  attacking  them ; 
they  forced  the  women  and  children  to  march  in  front  of 
their  ranks.  Unable  to  fire  upon  our  own  people,  we  with- 
drew as  far  as  Korvingrad,  where  a  new  battle  began  and 
where  the  Hungarians  attacked  us  from  behind.  We  made 
an  opening  and  took  refuge  in  the  mountains.  Since  I  was 
dead  from  fatigue  I  was  taken  prisoner,  and  with  a  dozen 
other  insurgents  was  condemned  to  be  hanged.  Waiting 
while  the  gibbet  was  prepared,  we  were  incarcerated  in  the 
prison  of  Prokouplie,  but  one  of  our  bands  killed  the  garri- 
son and  rescued  us. 

So  here  I  am  in  the  mountains.  It  may  be  that  when 
you  read  these  lines  I  shall  no  longer  be  among  the  living, 
but  the  insurrection  cannot  be  snuffed  out  so  easily,  for  the 
Bulgarians  are  proceeding  systematically  to  exterminate  our 


THE  SERBIAN  EXODUS  409 

nation.  On  the  25th  of  April  they  placed  aboard  trains  at 
Belotintze  8,000  children  between  the  ages  of  12  and  15, 
bound  for  Constantinople.  Many  of  the  children  jumped 
from  the  cars  along  the  way,  and  found  death  in  that 
manner. 

BY  KOSTA    NOVAKOVITCH 

As  to  Serbia  itself,  the  state  of  things  is  more  hopeless 
than  ever.  The  official  statistics  are  published  in  several 
Austro-Hungarian  journals  and  fully  in  the  Official  Jour- 
nal at  Belgrade,  the  Belgradske  Novine.  There  it  was 
stated  that  the  Serbian  population  in  the  territories  occupied 
by  Austria-Hungary  a  year  ago  was  only  2,218,027.  The 
population  normally  would  have  been  3,170,000.  There  is, 
therefore,  a  reduction  of  951,973,  or  28.2  per  cent.  The 
male  population  has  been  reduced  by  38.3  per  cent.  In  some 
towns  this  percentage  is  much  greater.  At  Belgrade  it  is 
65.6  per  cent. ;  at  Shabatz  47.6  per  cent.  There  are  now 
in  Serbia  144  women  to  100  men.  At  Belgrade  even  the 
female  population  has  gone  down  by  21.6  per  cent. 

In  the  Segedi  Naplo  of  August  2,  1917,  the  Secretary  of 
the  Chamber  of  Commerce  at  Segedine  states  that  the  dif- 
ference between  the  official  Serbian  statistics  of  1910  and  the 
returns  now  made  by  the  Bulgarians  in  the  territories  they 
occupy  is  300,000.  The  same  authority  states  that  all  the 
males  from  18  to  60  are  away  from  their  homes.  In  1910 
the  population  of  Serbia  was  4,300,000.  It  is  now  reduced 
by  1,352,000.  Then  there  are  the  massacres  committed  by 
the  Bulgarian  military  authorities  after  a  revolt  of  the  Ser- 
bian people  against  enforced  recruiting.  The  revolt  was 
crushed  in  blood.  Those  left  were  deported.  This  fact  is 
admitted  by  the  Bulgarian  War  Minister  in  the  document 
sent  to  the  Bulgarian  Headquarters. 

Dr.  Otokar  Ribar,  the  Austrian  Reichsrat  Deputy,  de- 
clared in  the  Vienna  Parliament  on  June  26th  last :  "Ser- 
bia will  be  saved,  but  there  will  no  longer  be  Serbs."  He  said 
these  words  when  protesting  against  the  greatest  crime  com- 
mitted in  this  war,  the  deportation  of  30,000  Serbian  women, 
children,  and  men  from  the  departments  of  Vranje,  Nish,  and 


410  THE  SERBIAN  EXODUS 

Pirot,  and  their  internment  in  Asia  Minor.  Fugitives  relate 
that,  among  those  30,000,  there  were  8,000  women  and 
young  girls  delivered  over  to  the  Turks.  Of  these  a  great 
number  courted  death  by  throwing  themselves  out  of  the 
trains  conveying  them  to  Asia  Minor.  War  prisoners  and 
those  interned  are  suffering  actual  martyrdom.  They  are 
ravaged  by  hunger  and  disease.  Their  number  decreases 
daily. 

Imagine,  then,  the  state  of  mind  of  those  surviving  in 
France  and  near  Salonika  who  receive  every  day  letters  from 
their  families  remaining  in  Serbia  appealing  for  bread,  and 
money  to  buy  bread ;  requests,  too,  from  prisoners  and  those 
interned,  who  cry:  "Send  us  bread,  or  you  will  not  see  us 
again  alive."- 


THE  AGONY  OF  POLAND 

SLAVERY  AND  DISEASE  SLAY   HALF  A  MILLION 

F.  C  WALCOTT  M.  TROMPCZYNSKI 

STATEMENT  OF  GENERAL  VON  KRIES 

Words  can  not  picture  the  mortal  "Agony  of  Poland."  Harrowed 
and  plundered  in  both  the  German  attacks  of  1914,  her  lands  were 
again  fought  over  in  1915  until,  with  the  fall  of  Warsaw  in  August, 
control  of  her  destinies  passed  for  over  three  years  into  German 
hands.  There  can  be  no  question  that  the  German  war  lords  delib- 
erately planned  the  extirpation  of  the  Polish  race,  even  as  the  Bul- 
garians sought  the  extinction  of  the  Serbs. 

Germany  intended  that  Poland  should  become  a  permanent  part 
of  her  Mid-Europe  Empire,  and  a  loyal  part  inhabited  by  Germans 
not  by  obstinate  Poles  who  somehow  persisted  in  refusing  to  accept 
their  manifest^  destiny  and  become  slaves  of  the  Germans.  Read  the 
officially  published  statement  of  Mr.  Walcott,  an  American  member, 
first  of  the  Belgian  Relief  Commission,  and  then  of  the  commission 
to  Poland.  Read  the  statement  which  he  quotes  from  General  von 
Kries,  the  German  commander  in  Poland.  Read  the  speech  of  the 
Polish  legislator,  M.  Trompczynski,  going  as  far  as  he  might  venture 
before  a  Prussian  legislature.  And  then  read  the  terrible  picture  drawn 
by  the  Poles  themselves,  and  you  will  know  that  it  is  not  exaggerated. 

Germany  undertook  the  task  of  extirpating  the  Poles  from  Poland 
with  a  scientific  thoroughness  that  put  to  shame  the  crude  method 
of  individual  murder  employed  against  Serbia  by  the  Bulgarians.  In 
Belgium  the  German  rulers  were  restrained  by  the  constant  pres- 
ence and  protest  of  many  neutrals.  In  Poland  there  were  no  lookers 
on,  and  the  super-beast  could  work  his  will. 

BY  FREDERICK  C.  WALCOTT 
Officially  Published  by  the  United  States  in  September,  1917 

THIS  I  have  seen.  I  could  not  believe  it  unless  I  had  seen 
it  through  and  through.  For  several  weeks  I  lived  with 
it;  I  went  all  about  it  and  back  of  it;  inside  and  out  of  it  was 
shown  to  me — until  finally  I  came  to  realize  that  the  in- 
credible was  true.  It  is  monstrous,  it  is  unthinkable,  but  it 
exists.     It  is  the  Prussian  system. 

A  year  ago  I  went  to  Poland  to  learn  its  facts  concerning 
the  remnant  of  a  people  that  had  been  decimated  by  war. 

411 


412  THE  AGONY  OF  POLAND 

The  country  had  been  twice  devastated.  First  the  Russian 
army  swept  through  it  and  then  the  Germans.  Along  the 
roadside  from  Warsaw  to  Pinsk,  the  present  firing  line, 
230  miles,  near  half  a  million  people  had  died  of  hunger  and 
cold.  The  way  was  strewn  with  their  bones  picked  clean  by 
the  crows.  With  their  usual  thrift,  the  Germans  were  col- 
lecting the  larger  bones  to  be  milled  into  fertilizer,  but  finger 
and  toe  bones  lay  on  the  ground  with  the  mud-covered  and 
rain-soaked  clothing. 

Wicker  baskets  were  scattered  along  the  way — the  basket 
in  which  the  baby  swings  from  the  rafter  in  every  peasant 
home.  Every  mile  there  were  scores  of  them,  each  one  telling 
a  death.  I  started  to  count,  but  after  a  little  I  had  to  give 
it  up,  there  were  so  many. 

That  is  the  desolation  one  saw  along  the  great  road  from 
Warsaw  to  Pinsk,  mile  after  mile,  more  than  two  hundred 
miles.  They  told  me  a  million  people  were  made  homeless 
in  six  weeks  of  the  German  drive  in  August  and  September, 
191 5.  They  told  me  four  hundred  thousand  died  on  the  way. 
The  rest,  scarcely  half  alive,  got  through  with  the  Russian 
army.  Many  of  these  have  been  sent  to  Siberia;  it  is  these 
people  whom  the  Paderewski  committee  is  trying  to  relieve. 

In  the  refugee  camps,  300,000  survivors  of  the  flight 
were  gathered  by  the  Germans,  members  of  broken  families. 
They  were  lodged  in  jerry-built  barracks,  scarcely  water- 
proof, unlighted,  unwarmed  in  the  dead  of  winter.  Their 
clothes,  where  the  buttons  were  lost,  were  sewed  on.  There 
were  no  conveniences,  they  had  not  even  been  able  to  wash 
for  weeks.  Filth  and  infection  from  vermin  were  spreading. 
They  were  famished,  their  daily  ration  a  cup  of  soup  and  a 
piece  of  bread  as  big  as  my  fist. 

In  Warsaw,  which  had  not  been  destroyed,  a  city  of  one 
million  inhabitants,  one  of  the  most  prosperous  cities  of  Eu- 
rope before  the  war,  the  streets  were  lined  with  people  in 
the  pangs  of  starvation.  Famished  and  rain-soaked,  they 
squatted  there,  with  their  elbows  on  their  knees  or  leaning 
against  the  buildings,  too  feeble  to  lift  a  hand  for  a  bit  of 
money  or  a  morsel  of  bread  if  one  offered  it,  perishing  of 
hunger  and  cold.    Charity  did  what  it  could.    The  rich  gave 


THE  AGONY  OF  POLAND  413 

all  that  they  had,  the  poor  shared  their  last  crust.  Hundreds 
of  thousands  were  perishing.  Day  and  night  the  picture  is 
before  my  eyes — a  people  starving,  a  nation  dying. 

In  that  situation,  the  German  commander  issued  a  procla- 
mation. Every  able-bodied  Pole  was  bidden  to  Germany  to 
work.  If  any  refused,  let  no  other  Pole  give  him  to  eat,  not 
so  much  as  a  mouthful,  under  penalty  of  German  military 
law. 

This  is  the  choice  the  German  Government  gives  to  the 
conquered  Pole,  to  the  husband  and  father  of  a  starving  fam- 
ily :  Leave  your  family  to  die  or  survive  as  the  case  may 
be.  Leave  your  country  which  is  destroyed,  to  work  in 
Germany  for  its  further  destruction.  If  you  are  obstinate, 
we  shall  see  that  you  surely  starve. 

Staying  with  his  folk,  he  is  doomed  and  they  are  not 
saved;  the  father  and  husband  can  do  nothing  for  them,  he 
only  adds  to  their  risk  and  suffering.  Leaving  them,  he  will 
be  cut  off  from  his  family,  they  may  never  hear  from  him 
again  nor  he  from  them.  Germany  will  set  him  to  work 
that  a  German  workman  may  be  released  to  fight  against  his 
own  land  and  people.  He  shall  be  lodged  in  barracks,  be- 
hind barbed  wire  entanglements,  under  armed  guard.  He 
shall  sleep  on  the  bare  ground  with  a  single  thin  blanket. 
He  shall  be  scantily  fed  and  his  earnings  shall  be  taken 
from  him  to  pay  for  his  food. 

That  is  the  choice  which  the  German  Government  offers 
to  a  proud,  sensitive,  high  strung  people.    Death  or  slavery. 

When  a  Pole  gave  me  that  proclamation,  I  was  boiling. 
But  I  had  to  restrain  myself.  I  was  practically  the  only 
foreign  civilian  in  the  country  and  I  wanted  to  get  food  to 
the  people.  That  was  what  I  was  there  for  and  I  must  not 
for  any  cause  jeopardize  the  undertaking.  I  asked  Gov- 
ernor General  von  Beseler  "Can  this  be  true?" 

"Really,  I  cannot  say,"  he  replied,  "I  have  signed  so  many 
proclamations;  ask  General  von  Kries." 

So  I  asked  General  von  Kries.  "General,  this  is  a  civil- 
ized people.     Can  this  be  true?" 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "it  is  true" — with  an  air  of  adding,  Why 
not? 


414  THE  AGONY  OF  POLAND 

I  dared  not  trust  myself  to  speak ;  I  turned  to  go.  "Wait," 
he  said.  And  he  explained  to  me  how  Germany,  official 
Germany,  regards  the  state  of  subject  peoples. 

Even  now  I  find  it  hard  to  describe  in  comprehensible 
terms  the  mind  of  official  Germany,  which  dominates  and 
shapes  all  German  thought  and  action.  Yet  it  is  as  hard,  as 
clear-cut,  as  real  as  any  material  thing.  I  saw  it  in  Poland, 
I  saw  the  same  thing  in  Belgium,  I  hear  of  it  in  Serbia  and 
Rumania.  For  weeks  it  was  always  before  me,  always  the 
same.  Officers  talked  freely,  frankly,  directly.  All  the  staff 
officers  have  the  same  view. 

Let  me  try  to  tell  it,  as  General  von  Kries  told  me,  in 
Poland,  in  the  midst  of  a  dying  nation.  Germany  is  des- 
tined to  rule  the  world,  or  at  least  a  great  part  of  it.  The 
German  people  are  so  much  human  material  for  building  the 
German  state,  other  people  do  not  count.  All  is  for  the 
glory  and  might  of  the  German  state.  The  lives  of  human 
beings  are  to  be  conserved  only  if  it  makes  for  the  state's 
advancement,  their  lives  are  to  be  sacrificed  if  it  is  to  the 
state's  advantage.     The  state  is  all,  the  people  are  nothing. 

Conquered  people  signify  little  in  the  German  account. 
Life,  liberty,  happiness,  human  sentiment,  family  ties,  grace 
and  generous  impulse,  these  have  no  place  beside  the  one 
concern,  the  greatness  of  the  German  state. 

Starvation  must  excite  no  pity;  sympathy  must  not  be 
allowed,  if  it  hampers  the  main  design  of  promoting  Ger- 
many's ends. 

"Starvation  is  here,"  said  General  von  Kries.  "Candidly, 
we  would  like  to  see  it  relieved;  we  fear  our  soldiers  may 
be  unfavorably  affected  by  the  things  that  they  see.  But 
since  it  is  here,  starvation  must  serve  our  purpose.  So  we 
set  it  to  work  for  Germany.  By  starvation  we  can  accom- 
plish in  two  or  three  years  in  East  Poland  more  than  we 
have  in  West  Poland,  which  is  East  Prussia,  in  the  last 
hundred  years.  With  that  in  view,  we  propose  to  turn  this 
force  to  our  advantage." 

"This  country  is  meant  for  Germany,"  continued  the 
keeper  of  starving  Poland.  "It  is  a  rich  alluvial  country 
which  Germany  has  needed  for  some  generations.    We  pro- 


THE  AGONY  OF  POLAND  415 

pose  to  remove  the  able-bodied  working  Poles  from  this 
country.  It  leaves  it  open  for  the  inflow  of  German  working 
people  as  fast  as  we  can  spare  them.  They  will  occupy  it 
and  work  it." 

Then  with  a  cunning  smile,  "Can't  you  see  how  it  works 
out?  By  and  by  we  shall  give  back  freedom  to  Poland. 
When  that  happens  Poland  will  appear  automatically  as  a 
German  province." 

In  Belgium,  General  von  Bissing  told  me  exactly  the 
same  thing.  "If  the  relief  of  Belgium  breaks  down  we  can 
force  the  industrial  population  into  Germany  through  starva- 
tion and  colonize  other  Belgians  in  Mesopotamia,  where  we 
have  planned  large  irrigation  works;  Germans  will  then 
overrun  Belgium.  Then  when  the  war  is  over  and  freedom 
is  given  back  to  Belgium,  it  will  be  a  German  Belgium  that 
is  restored.  Belgium  will  be  a  German  province  and  we 
have  Antwerp — which  is  what  we  are  after." 

In  Poland,  the  able-bodied  men  are  being  removed  to  re- 
lieve the  German  workman  and  make  the  land  vacant  for 
Germany.  In  Belgium,  the  men  are  deported  that  the  coun- 
try may  be  a  German  colony.  In  Serbia,  where  three- 
fourths  of  a  million  people  out  of  three  millions  have  per- 
ished miserably  in  the  last  three  years,  Germany  hardens 
its  heart,  shuts  its  eyes  to  the  suffering,  thinks  only  of  Ger- 
many's gain.  In  Armenia,  six  hundred  thousand  people 
were  slain  in  cold  blood  by  Kurds  and  Turks  under  the  domi- 
nation and  leadership  of  German  officers — Germany  looking 
on,  indifferent  to  the  horror  and  woe,  intent  only  on  seizing 
the  opportunity  thus  given.  War,  famine,  pestilence — these 
bring  to  the  German  mind  no  appeal  for  humane  effort,  only 
the  resolution  to  profit  from  them  to  the  utmost  that  the 
German  state  may  be  powerful  and  great. 

That  is  not  all.  Removing  the  men,  that  the  land  may  be 
vacant  for  German  occupation,  that  German  stock  may  re- 
place Belgians,  Poles,  Serbians,  Armenians,  and  now  Ru- 
manians, Germany  does  more.  Women  left  captive  are  en- 
slaved. Germany  makes  all  manner  of  lust  its  instrumen- 
tality. 

The  other  day  a  friend  of  mine  told  me  of  a  man  just 


4i6 


THE  AGONY  OF  POLAND 


returned  from  Northern  France.  "I  cannot  tell  you  the 
details,"  he  said,  "man  to  man,  I  don't  want  to  repeat  what 
I  heard."  Some  of  the  things  he  did  tell — shocking  mutila- 
tion and  moral  murder.  He  told  of  women,  by  the  score, 
in  occupied  territory  of  Northern  France,  prisoned  in  un- 
derground dungeons,  tethered  for  the  use  of  their  bodies  by 
officers  and  men. 

If  this  is  not  a  piece  of  the  Prussian  system,  it  is  the 
logical  product  of  disregard  of  the  rights  of  others. 

Such  is  the  German  mind  as  it  was  disclosed  to  me  in 
several  weeks'  contact  with  officers  of  the  staff.  Treaties  are 
scraps  of  paper,  if  they  hinder  German  aims.  Treachery  is 
condoned  and  praised,  if  it  falls  in  with  German  interest. 
Men,  lands,  countries  are  German  prizes.  Populations  are 
to  be  destroyed  or  enslaved  so  Germany  may  gain.  Women 
are  Germany's  prey,  children  are  spoils  of  war.  God  gave 
Germany  the  Hohenzollern  and  together  they  are  destined 
to  rule  Europe  and,  eventually,  the  world — thus  reasons  the 
Kaiser. 

Coolly,  deliberately,  officers  of  the  German  staff,  per- 
meated by  this  monstrous  philosophy,  discuss  the  denationali- 
zation of  peoples,  the  destruction  of  nations,  the  undoing  of 
other  civilizations,   for  Germany's  account. 

In  all  the  world  such  a  thing  has  never  been.  The  human 
mind  has  never  conceived  the  like.  Even  among  barbarians, 
the  thing  would  be  incredible.  The  mind  can  scarcely  grasp 
the  fact  that  these  things  are  proposed  and  done  by  a  modern 
government  professedly  a  Christian  government  in  the  fam- 
ily of  civilized  nations. 

This  system  has  got  to  be  rooted  out.  If  it  takes  every- 
thing in  the  world,  if  it  takes  every  one  of  us,  this  abomina- 
tion must  be  overthrown.  It  must  be  ended  or  the  world  is 
not  worth  living  in.  No  matter  how  long  it  takes,  no  matter 
how  much  it  costs,  we  must  endure  to  the  end  with  agonized 
France,  with  imperiled  Britain,  with  shattered  Belgium,  with 
shaken  Russia. 

We  must  hope  that  Germany  will  have  a  new  birth  as 
Russia  is  being  reborn.  We  must  pray,  as  we  fight  against 
the  evil  that  is  in  Germany,  that  the  good  which  is  in  Ger- 


THE  AGONY  OF  POLAND  417 

many  may  somehow  prevail.  We  must  trust  that  in  the  end 
a  Germany  really  great  with  the  strength  of  a  wonderful 
race  may  find  its  place  as  one  of  the  brotherhood  of  nations 
in  the  new  world  that  is  to  be. 

BY   M.    TROMPCZYNSKI 
Speech  by  a  Polish  Member  of  the  Prussian  Legislature  in  1017 

In  the  first  place,  I  wish  to  call  attention  to  the  sad  fate 
of  the  Polish  workmen  from  the  Kingdom  of  Poland  (Rus- 
sian Poland).  I  know  very  well  that  different  abuses,  of 
which  these  workmen  are  victims,  are  not  the  fault  of  the 
Minister,  or  of  his  Department,  because  he  has  to  share  his 
power  with  the  military  authorities.  If,  however,  the  Min- 
ister cannot  help  I  appeal  to  public  opinion  to  force  a  change 
in  the  conditions. 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  250,000  Polish  workmen 
happened  to  be  in  Germany.  In  accordance  with  military 
orders,  they  were  forbidden  to  leave  the  territory  of  the  Ger- 
man Empire.  This  order  was  completely  illegal  and  con- 
trary to  the  principles  of  international  law,  which  admit 
only  such  aliens  to  be  interned  who  might  be  summoned  to 
the  enemy  army.  You  can  easily  imagine  the  condition  of 
these  people  who  now  for  two  and  a  half  years  have  been 
separated  from  their  families.  They  have  simply  become 
victims  of  exploitation  on  the  part  of  their  employers,  who 
now  that  the  workman  cannot  leave  his  place  of  employment 
pay  only  as  much  as  they  choose.  For  instance,  in  a  certain 
village  of  West  Prussia  a  certain  farmer  pays  the  season- 
workman  literally  30  pfennigs  (33/2  d.)  daily,  and  has  kept 
him  for  the  last  two  years ! 

As  the  need  for  workmen  was  greater  than  the  number 
of  those  interned,  attempts  have  been  made  to  get  a  bigger 
number  of  workmen  from  the  Kingdom  of  Poland.  Gradu- 
ally the  number  of  workmen  from  the  Kingdom  has  reached 
the  figure  of  half  a  million.  The  present  Minister  of  the 
Interior  has  handed  over  the  monopoly  of  finding  new  work- 
men to  the  Central  German  Labor  Office.  I  am  compelled 
to  accuse  that  institution  of  choosing  for  its  agents — and 
there  are  some  600  of  them — people  who  grossly  mislead  the 

w.,  VOL.  III.— 27. 


418  THE  AGONY  OF  POLAND 

workmen  concerning  their  future  pay  and  mode  of  employ- 
ment. One  of  their  special  ways  of  attracting  people  is  to 
promise  in  a  written  agreement  very  considerable  supplies 
in  kind,  for  instance,  30  pounds  of  potatoes  a  week,  a  liter 
of  milk  a  day,  etc.,  and  they  do  not  call  attention  to  the 
postscriptum  which  states  that  instead  of  the  supplies  in 
kind,  money  will  be  given.  The  German  newspapers  have 
raised  an  outcry  that  those  workmen  get  so  much  food, 
whereas  in  reality  they  get  very  little  food,  and  instead  of 
a  pound  of  potatoes  they  get  3^2  pfennigs,  and  for  a  liter 
of  milk  4  or  5  pfennigs.  It  is  clear  that  for  that  money 
they  cannot  buy  even  sufficient  food. 

The  next  way  in  which  the  workman  is  being  exploited 
is  the  time  of  service  to  which  he  agrees.  In  the  printed  agree- 
ments it  is  usually  stated  that  the  agreement  is  for  six 
months  or  the  duration  of  the  war.  The  agents  rely  on  it  that 
no  one  reads  the  printed  contract  and  persuade  the  workman 
that  he  is  agreeing  only  to  six  months'  work.  I  know  it  from 
hundreds  of  workmen  that  they  have  been  cheated  in  that 
manner.  But  the  military  authorities  have  twisted  the  mat- 
ter still  more  to  the  detriment  of  the  workmen  by  declaring 
that  all  workmen  from  the  Kingdom  of  Poland  without 
regard  to  the  nature  of  their  agreement  are  considered  un- 
free,  i.e.,  prisoners  who  are  not  allowed  to  go  home.  I  ap- 
peal to  public  opinion  to  consider  in  what  an  unworthy  way 
these  people  have  been  attracted  by  lies  to  Germany.  And 
thus  there  are  many  thousands  of  them  who  imagined  that 
they  agreed  to  a  contract  for  six  months  and  who  have 
by  now  been  kept  here  for  more  than  a  year  and  a  half. 

Also  in  this  respect  the  employers  obviously  exploit  the 
situation  by  dictating  arbitrary  conditions  for  the  extension 
of  the  contract,  because  they  know  that  the  workman  is 
unable  to  defend  himself.  It  has,  moreover,  to  be  considered 
that  even  a  contract  extending  the  original  conditions  is 
now  detrimental  to  the  workmen,  because  it  is  impossible 
to  live  at  the  present  day  on  the  pay  which  was  sufficient  a 
year  and  a  half  ago. 

I  pillory  before  public  opinion  the  orders  of  the  Com- 
manding General  of  Miinster  of  October  16,  191 5,  and  Feb- 


THE  AGONY  OF  POLAND  419 

ruary  16,  191 6,  in  which  he  recommends  to  the  employers 
to  compel  unwilling  workmen  to  accept  an  extension  of  the 
contract  by  depriving  them  of  their  bedding,  of  light  and 
food.  I  hope  that  the  Minister  will  use  his  influence  in 
order  to  prevent  the  new  military  authorities  from  continuing 
such  a  policy. 

Nor  can  I  remain  silent  on  the  point  that  recently  the 
Central  Labor  Office  has  instituted  with  the  help  of  the  local 
authorities  in  the  Kingdom  of  Poland  a  regular  hunt  for 
people.  Thus,  for  instance,  towards  the  end  of  November, 
1916,  i.e.,  after  the  Manifesto  of  November  5th  (the  Procla- 
mation of  Polish  "Independence"),  a  free  entertainment  was 
announced  in  the  theater.  The  lights  were  put  up  in  the  thea- 
ter, but  when  the  public  had  assembled  the  theater  was  sur- 
rounded by  soldiers,  men  fit  for  work  were  caught  and 
handed  over  to  the  Central  Labor  Office. 

Further,  the  Minister  of  the  Interior  has  issued  an  order 
that  subjects  of  the  Kingdom  of  Poland  can  be  employed 
only  in  big  or  middling  undertakings  and  not  in  small  ones. 
The  result  of  this  order  is  that  the  police  remove  hairdressers, 
bakers,  tailors,  etc.,  from  their  workshops  and  send  them  to 
the  farmers.  These  orders  are  supposed  to  help  the  farmers 
who  suffer  from  a  lack  of  labor,  whilst  in  reality  they 
burden  the  farms  with  workmen,  some  of  whom  are  weak 
and  others  incapable  of  doing  the  work,  and  who,  anyhow, 
are  unwilling  to  do  it. 

We  have  no  objection  to  our  countrymen  from  the  King- 
dom of  Poland  seeking  work  in  this  country,  but  we  con- 
sider it  a  most  scandalous  injustice  that  an  order  has  been 
issued  which,  without  any  reason  or  sensible  purpose,  has 
changed  these  workmen  into  slaves. 

From  Various  Polish  Newspapers 

The  German  authorities  are  doing  everything  in  their 
power  to  induce  workmen  to  leave  for  Germany.  They  al- 
most force  them  to  go.  The  workmen,  however,  are  not 
willing  to  leave  the  country,  and  the  majority  of  them  go 
to  work  on  the  land.  People  who  go  to  Prussia  for  work 
must  have  a  certificate.     A  man  may  only  leave  his  (Prus- 


420  THE  AGONY  OF  POLAND 

sian)  employer  when  he  has  obtained  another  post.  If  he 
tries  to  return  home,  the  Prussian  authorities  throw  all  sorts 
of  difficulties  in  his  way. 

"Warsaw,"  writes  the  Nowa  Reforma  on  November  7, 
1915,  "is  getting  depopulated  on  account  of  the  incredibly 
high  prices  and  the  economic  stagnation."  Yet  the  migra- 
tion to  the  countryside  must  have  accounted  for  most  of  this 
depopulation,  for  the  migration  from  Warsaw  to  Germany 
has  been  extraordinarily  small.  At  the  end  of  November, 
191 5,  no  more  than  2,639  Warsaw  workmen  had  answered 
the  German  call ;  8,000  more  had  been  beaten  up  from  Piotr- 
kov,  Pabianitse  and  Lask;  21,000  working  men  and  1,702 
working  women  have  gone  to  Germany  from  Lodz,  and 
2,427  persons  of  the  educated  class — less  than  25,000  peo- 
ple in  all  from  a  district  where  the  cessation  of  industry 
has  cut  off  the  subsistence  of  500,000  souls.  If  we  add  20,- 
000  emigrants  from  the  coal  district,  we  have  enumerated 
them  all;  and  it  will  be  obvious  at  once  that  the  German 
bid  for  Polish  labor  has  been  a  miserable  fiasco. 

The  Germans  hoped  high  things  from  their  "organiza- 
tion" of  Poland.  They  hoped  to  organize  Polish  food  into 
German  warehouses  and  to  organize  Polish  industry  out  of 
existence,  and  that  much  they  have  achieved.  But  their 
greatest  dream  was  this  exploitation  of  Polish  man-power, 
this  drafting  of  skilled  and  docile  helots  into  German  work- 
shops and  mines,  so  that  every  able-bodied  German  might 
be  free  to  take  his  rifle  and  enter  the  fighting  ranks,  with 
a  vast  impetus  to  German  military  power.  It  was  an  auda- 
cious conception,  but  it  has  failed — failed,  as  so  often  hap- 
pens with  German  schemes,  through  a  radical  mistake  in 
psychology.  It  might  have  been  possible  in  an  ant-hill — 
ants  exploit  in  such  fashion  more  tame  and  sluggish  insects — 
but  it  is  not  possible  in  this  "barbaric"  or  "decadent"  Eu- 
rope, which  Germany  aspires  to  organize  on  to  a  higher 
plane. 

The  spirit  of  the  Polish  people  has  not  been  broken,  and 
Germany  has  been  foiled  of  her  expectation.  But  Poland 
is  still  in  her  power,  and  there  is  nothing  to  restrain  Ger- 


THE  AGONY  OF  POLAND  421 

many  from  her  revenge.     The  suffering  of  Poland  grows 
more  terrible  month  by  month. 

From  the  Journal  de  Geneve,  December  1,  191 5 

According  to  the  Special  correspondent  of  the  Journal 
de  Geneve,  the  condition  of  Lodz  goes  from  bad  to  worse. 
The  two  chief  evils,  as  was  to  be  expected,  are  lack  of  em- 
ployment and  exorbitantly  high  prices.  As  for  the  former, 
the  factories  are  now  working  only  three  days  in  the  week, 
the  raw  material  having  been  mostly  requisitioned  by  Ger- 
many. At  first  the  invaders  did  everything  they  could  to 
persuade  the  artisans  to  emigrate  to  Germany,  which  is  at 
present  short  of  labor.  But,  when  it  was  found  that  only  a 
few  thousand  yielded  to  persuasion,  the  President  of  Po- 
lice issued  a  proclamation  (end  of  September)  in  which, 
after  announcing  that  the  factories  would  soon  be  altogether 
closed  and  that  no  relief  would  be  distributed  during  the 
winter  from  any  source,  he  offered  navvy  work  on  the  repair 
of  the  roads  and  bridges,  work  which  it  was  known  would 
employ  only  a  limited  number,  and  that  only  for  a  short 
time,  as  the  sole  alternative  to  emigration.  That  is  the  di- 
lemma which  the  artisans  have  now  to  face. 

This  leads  to  the  question  of  prices.  The  German  au- 
thorities have  commandeered  all  provisions.  Wheat  may 
now  be  sold  only  by  the  Goods  Importation  Company,  which 
buys  it  up  cheap  from  the  peasants  and  sells  the  resultant 
flour  (war-flour)  at  exorbitant  prices  to  the  townspeople, 
who  find  their  bread  "simply  uneatable,"  as  well  as  10  per 
cent,  above  the  price  to  which  they  were  accustomed.  The 
same  company  has  the  monopoly  of  sugar  and  alcohol. 
"Huge  quantities"  of  pulse  and  oatmeal  have  been  exported 
to  Germany,  and  their  price  at  Lodz  has  gone  up  fourfold. 
The  present  scheme  for  exporting  to  Germany  12-15  million 
quintals  of  potatoes  will  cause  a  similar  rise  in  what  is  now 
"almost  the  only  resource  left  to  the  poor."  Almost  all 
the  cattle  have  already  been  exported,  and  the  price  of  meat, 
which  for  some  months  has  been  quite  beyond  the  reach  of 
the  artisans,  has  gone  up  400-500  per  cent.  Even  the  hand- 
fuls  of  bread,  meat,  and  flour,  which  the  artisans  who  have 


422  THE  AGONY  OF  POLAND 

taken  work  in  the  fields  bring  back  with  them,  are  confiscated 
at  the  city  gates,  on  the  plea  of  contraband. 

It  was  oppressive  measures  of  the  same  kind  which 
brought  about  the  "riots  of  Lodz."  In  the  course  of  Sep- 
tember, the  municipality  cut  off  the  relief  which  had  hitherto 
been  paid  to  the  wives  of  Russian  reservists.  The  women,  to 
the  number  of  nearly  15,000,  rioted,  and  the  authorities 
were  compelled  to  renew  the  grants,  setting  aside  3  million 
marks  for  the  purpose. 

As  for  landed  property,  the  German  authorities  have 
piled  such  heavy  taxes  upon  it  that  even  the  German  land- 
lords, of  whom  there  are  a  good  many,  have  risen  in  revolt 
and  are  joining  the  Poles  in  deputations  to  Warsaw  and 
Berlin. 

Under  these  circumstances,  can  it  be  wondered  that  "in- 
dignation against  the  proceedings  of  the  German  authorities 
is  growing  from  day  to  day  and  that,  especially  among  the 
working  classes,  it  is  now  passing  into  open  hostility." 

From  the  Nowa  Reforma  of  November  20,  191 5 

A  communication  from  Lodz,  dated  November  18th,  de- 
scribes the  unfathomable  distress  of  the  city.  Prices  are 
higher  than  the  highest  known  anywhere  else.  According  to 
the  Nowy  Kuryer  Lodzki:  "At  a  sitting  of  the  Town  Coun- 
cil of  Lodz  Mr.  Winnicki,  a  town  councilor  of  Polish  na- 
tionality, raised  the  question  why  the  German  'Import 
Company,'  which  has  been  invested  by  the  German  Gov- 
ernment with  the  monopoly  of  buying  grain  for  Russian  Po- 
land, pays  7^2  roubles  for  1  cwt.  of  rye  when  it  buys  it  in 
the  districts  of  Russian  Poland  under  German  occupation, 
but  charges  at  Lodz  23  roubles  for  a  bag  of  'war  flour' 
which  contains  hardly  40  per  cent,  of  the  1  cwt.  of  rye.  In 
answer  to  Mr.  Winnicki's  question,  the  senior  burgomaster, 
Herr  Schoppen,1  answered  that  an  injustice  is  certainly  done 
to  the  inhabitants  of  Lodz,  but  that  he  could  do  nothing  to 
lower  prices,  since  the  prices  at  which  the  'Import  Company, 
Limited,'  bought  grain  in  Russian  Poland,  as  well  as  the 
prices  it  charged  for  grain  at  Lodz  and  elsewhere,  had  been 

1  A  German  official  appointed  by  the  German  Government. 


THE  AGONY  OF  POLAND  423 

fixed  by  Field-Marshal  von  Hindenburg,  Supreme  Com- 
mander in  the  East,  and  could  not,  therefore,  be  modified 
by  the  town  administration.  In  order,  however,  to  ease 
the  situation  to  some  degree,  Herr  Schoppen  promised  in 
his  own  name,  and  in  that  of  the  German  police,  to  lower  the 
octroi  for  the  importation  of  food  into  Lodz,  considerable 
supplies  being  available  at  some  distance  from  the  city. 

"The  delegation  from  Lodz  which  went  recently  to  Ber- 
lin to  raise  a  loan  for  the  town,  complained  about  the  ex- 
cessive price  of  bread.  It  asked  that  the  town  might  be  al- 
lowed to  provision  itself  without  the  intervention  of  the 
'Import  Company,  Ltd.,'  as  is  done  in  neighboring  towns, 
where  bread  is  consequently  cheaper  by  about  30  per  cent. 

"The  scarcity  of  fuel  in  Lodz  is  equally  the  fault  of  the 
'Import  Company.'  The  town  requires  about  150  railway 
trucks  of  coal  a  day,  and  it  has  to  import  it  by  way  of  Ger- 
many instead  of  getting  it  straight  from  Polish  coal-fields. 
This  city  of  half  a  million  inhabitants  has  no  stores  of  fuel, 
and  if  the  railway  communication  is  interrupted  it  may  be 
left  destitute  of  fuel  altogether,  especially  as  the  forests 
round  Lodz  have  been  cut  down  during  the  war." 

That  is  a  faithful  picture  of  Lodz  as  it  was  three  months 
ago.  The  nightmare  of  starvation  had  haunted  the  folk  the 
whole  summer  through,  and  now  it  was  accompanied  by  a 
more  frightful  prospect  still.  Winter  was  at  hand — the  mer- 
ciless winter  of  Northeastern  Europe — and  they  were  to  be 
abandoned  without  fuel  to  the  intolerable  cold.  Here  is  the 
plight  that  stared  them  in  the  face,  as  it  is  outlined  in  the 
Lodzianin,  the  Social  Democratic  newspaper  in  the  town: 

"There  are  about  60,000  householders  in  Lodz.  Every 
one  of  them  is  entitled  to  a  coal  card,  and  as  only  150  of  these 
are  issued  a  day  (which  makes  4,500  a  month),  the  rest  are 
likely  to  remain  without  fuel  for  the  winter.  The  cold 
favors  the  development  of  tuberculosis.  Last  year  we  had 
40  per  cent,  mortality  from  tuberculosis,  although  condi- 
tions then  were  much  better  than  can  be  hoped  for  this 
winter. 

"The  manufacturers  have  been  told  to  give  support  only 
to  those  workmen  who  have  been  employed  by  them  for  no 


424  THE  AGONY  OF  POLAND 

less  than  15  years;  that  practically  means  the  old  people  who 
are  not  fit  to  go  to  work  in  Prussia.  The  German  admin- 
istration is  assisted  in  promoting  emigration  by  the  munici- 
pal authorities,  though  it  is  said  that  there  are  Poles,  too,  on 
the  town  council.  The  town  committee  for  poor  relief  helps 
only  those  who  bring  certificates  from  the  German  Labor 
Exchange  to  the  effect  that  they  are  not  fit  for  work  in  Ger- 
many. 

"We  raise  a  solemn  protest,  in  the  name  of  the  Polish 
laboring  classes,  to  all  the  more  enlightened  elements  of 
the  German  nation  and  to  German  Socialists  in  particular. 
The  present  condition  of  things  is  reducing  the  Polish  prole- 
tariat to  mental  and  physical  exhaustion." 

That  was  the  last  cry  of  despair,  before  the  winter  de- 
scended upon  Lodz  like  a  shroud. 

Here  are  a  few  sentences  from  a  statement  drawn  up, 
in  authoritative  Polish  quarters,  in  January,  1916: 

"On  May  22,  191 5,  all  textile  mills  in  Lodz  were  shut 
and  all  stocks  of  raw  materials,  as  well  as  part  of  the  ma- 
chinery, were  confiscated.  The  same  thing  happened  a  little 
later  in  Warsaw  and  Sosnovitse. 

"The  working  people  are  starving.  Hundreds  of  peo- 
ple are  dying  from  a  new  illness  caused  by  lack  of  food.  The 
majority  of  infants  have  died,  and  the  death-rate  is  now 
much  higher  than  the  birth-rate." 

That  is  a  bare  summary  of  what  has  occurred;  but  the 
agony  of  Lodz  is  revealed  in  detail  in  the  narrative  of  a 
visitor  to  the  city,  which  was  published  in  the  Nowa  Re- 
forma: 

"Wishing  to  acquaint  myself  with  the  misery  in  the  fac- 
tory towns  and  to  consider  means  of  relief,  I  went  to  Lodz. 
What  I  found  surpassed  my  most  awful  fears.  The  popu- 
lation is  slowly  dying,  after  exhausting  its  forces  in  a  hope- 
less struggle.  I  went  under  the  guidance  of  the  relief  care- 
taker of  the  district  and  I  visited  only  one  street,  Ciemna, 
in  the  suburb  of  Bluty.  We  went  to  the  house  of  a  boy  who 
is  now  in  our  Home  for  Children  at  Kutno.  We  were  to 
take  his  love  to  his  parents.  'Our  parents  are  gone,'  an- 
swered hie  eldest  sister  of  about  15.    'Father  died  a  week  ago 


THE  AGONY  OF  POLAND  425 

of  exhaustion,  and  the  day  after  father's  funeral  mother 
died  of  typhus.  It  is  the  same  next  door.  Both  the  father 
and  the  mother  have  died  during  the  war,  leaving  four  small 
children  in  the  care  of  a  brother  of  18. ' 

"When  we  entered  this  other  tenement  we  found  the 
youngest  child  of  two  dead  and  the  girl  of  four  dying.  There 
were  others  who  had  no  strength  left  to  fetch  wood  from 
the  forests  round  the  town,  and  were  burning  everything  they 
had — tables,  beds,  and  even  picture-frames. 

"In  one  of  these  tenements  we  found  only  a  group  of 
crying  children.  The  mother  had  died  and  the  father  had 
gone  out  into  the  country  to  beg  for  potatoes.  They  had 
sold  everything,  even  the  bedding,  the  most  precious  pos- 
session of  the  poor. 

"All  the  factories  at  Lodz  are  closed,  but  some  of  the 
rich  manufacturers  are  nobly  supporting  their  employees. 
They  give  them  a  rouble  (50  cents)  a  week.  The  poor  crea- 
tures, who  have  been  subsisting  many  months  now  on  that 
pittance  alone,  are  growing  anemic  and  consumptive;  but 
they  are  rich  in  comparison  with  the  families  to  which  the 
Town  Committee  allows  40  kopecks  (20  cents)  for  each 
adult  and  12  cents  for  every  child.  There  are  about  60,000 
of  these  families  in  the  care  of  the  Committee,  for  every 
one  is  economizing  on  account  of  the  general  high  prices, 
and  many  artisans,  tailors  and  servants  have  lost  employ- 
ment. Those  who  own  any  property  do  not  receive  any  sup- 
port from  the  Committee,  and  consequently  the  owners  of 
the  houses  in  the  suburbs  where  nobody  pays  any  rent,  are 
sometimes  worse  off  than  the  workmen.  I  shall  never  forget 
a  mother  with  five  small  children.  As  she  held  in  her  arms 
the  youngest,  who  was  only  two  years  old  and  who  already 
resembled  a  corpse,  she  said  to  me  with  desperate  resigna- 
tion: 'I  do  not  ask  for  any  medicine  for  him  at  the  hos- 
pital, for  the  doctor  told  me  to  give  him  nourishing  food, 
and  I  can  give  him  nothing  but  water.' 

"In  a  radius  of  a  few  miles  round  the  town  there  is  a 
regular  procession  of  starving  paupers  fetching  wood  or 
potatoes.  I  have  met  a  number  of  people  who  are  devoting 
their  services  to  the  relief  of  this  misery.     They  have  in- 


426  THE  AGONY  OF  POLAND 

stituted  cheap  kitchens,  homes  for  children  and  orphans,  free 
dinners  for  school  children,  tailoring  establishments  for  poor 
girls;  but  all  those  institutions  have  to  contend  continually 
against  lack  of  funds.  Some  of  them  have  even  had  to  be 
closed  because  local  philanthropy  is  unequal  to  their  main- 
tenance. The  cheap  kitchens  provide  for  3  kopecks  a  portion 
of  soup  so  poor  that  the  people  who  try  to  live  on  it  die  of 
exhaustion;  but  even  such  soup  cannot  be  provided  for  all, 
as  3  kopecks  is  far  below  cost  price  on  account  of  the  in- 
credibly high  prices  of  food." 

That  is  what  Germany  has  done  to  Lodz,  and  the  fate 
of  Lodz  is  being  shared  by  every  town  and  village  in  the  ter- 
ritory subject  to  German  "organization."  Nothing  could  be 
more  terrible  than  the  situation  at  Warsaw  itself.  The  fol- 
lowing paragraph  from  the  Kuryer  Warszawski  gives  a  suf- 
ficient glimpse  of  the  ghastly  life-in-death  there: 

"Nowadays  there  is  a  dearth  of  everything  in  Warsaw, 
even  of  wood  shavings  to  light  and  warm  the  room.  In  the 
Dzika  Street  opposite  Stawki,  near  the  cemeteries,  there  is 
a  big  timber  yard.  On  the  pavement  in  front  of  it  a  group 
of  women  and  children,  poorly  clad,  watch  eagerly  for  the 
removal  of  timber  from  the  yard,  because  then  some  shav- 
ings sometimes  drop  from  the  basket  or  cart  on  to  the  muddy 
pavement ;  that  is  the  signal  for  a  struggle,  the  prize  of  which 
is  that  little  scrap  of  wood.  Outside  the  yard  stands  a  watch- 
man with  a  whip.  On  Sunday,  at  noon,  we  had  been  watch- 
ing how  a  boy,  a  scholar  of  one  of  the  private  secondary 
schools  of  Warsaw,  had  collected  a  basketful  of  shavings 
which  had  been  lying  about  in  the  yard.  With  joy  radiant 
in  his  face  and  eyes,  he  was  carrying  the  basket  out  of  the 
yard  gate,  when  he  was  spied  by  the  watchman.  There  was 
a  short,  brutal  struggle,  and  the  watchman  had  snatched 
away  the  pitiful  booty,  while  a  group  of  ragged  women  and 
children  were  fighting  to  secure  the  shavings  which  fell  oui 
of  the  basket  into  the  mud." 


5a\ 

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